it's only a nightmare

It’s overcast today, for the first time in well over a week, but that doesn’t stop the heat rising from the earth like steam trapped in a saucepan, clouds forming a heavy lid over the dome of your existence. You can feel your heartbeat in your ears, your heavy pants the only sound in an otherwise windless expanse. A bead of sweat trickles down your temple, rubbed away by a brisk forearm that you can barely bear to lift. All the clothes you have, bar what you had on your back the day you arrived, are hand-me-downs that Molly’s been generous enough to offer you. It’s almost exclusively skirts; long and flowy with patterns in browns, greens, and oranges that match her hair. Long skirts that she was going to give away anyway, so you don’t have to worry about getting grass stains or dirty marks on them. Your thighs have begun to chafe and as much as you’re enjoying the pain now, like some sort of sweet release and a reminder that you’re alive, you’re afraid of how you’re gonna feel after. Because right now, beneath the bright grey sky and fields that span on as far as the eye can see, it’s hard to picture an ‘after’. 

But the after finally comes, and it comes in the form of two dark dots moving above the stone walls in the distance. They’re by a tree stump near the outskirts of the field when you reach the wall. You can see what they’ve been clearing, now; someone’s been fly-tipping. There’s a path leading into some bushes near the biggest heap of junk; the road they drove up on must be just out the other side. 

Arthur smiles brightly when he sees you, giving you an animated wave despite the ruddy cheeks that indicate his fatigue. 

“Excellent timing, my dear. Come!”

Remus is too far away for you to see the look on his face, and maybe you don’t want to look. But you’re happy to take a breather as they make their way towards you, your mouth dry and your breathing almost hoarse. You’ve barely had cause to see him since the bucket incident a few days ago. 

Arthur reaches you first, gesturing to the stone wall that separates you. 

“It’s a bit of a tall one, I’m afraid, and there’s no way round unless you walk all the way up to the car, but Remus’ll help you over in a jiffy. Won’t you, lad?”

Remus grumbles something unintelligible in response.

“Here, I’ll take that…”

Free of the tupperware, you’ve a hand free to shift your skirt. The seam’s twisted round to your front, and the label that’s supposed to be at the back is now digging itchily into the flesh of your hip. You smooth the fabric down, ignoring how prickly and oddly numb your fingertips feel.

“Well, come on, then.”

You blink stupidly. You’d forgotten about the logistics of getting over. Admittedly, climbing a wall might be the thing that finally tips your fatigue over the edge. 

“What… What do you want me to-”

“Oh, for fuck-”

He presses his palms against the top of the wall and pushes himself up over it with ease, landing beside you in a second. You turn to face him, but next thing you know his hands are pressing into your waist and he’s hoisted you up in the air like some rag doll, seating you atop the uneven stones. The straps of the cooler bag dig into your palms as you clumsily swing your legs over the other side and you concentrate on the burn for the second it takes him to jump back over. He doesn’t need to help you down, it’s just a simple drop, but his hand makes its way to the small of your back like it’s on instinct. 

You stand so close together when your feet touch the ground that you can smell the sweat and humidity off him, but it’s a grounding smell. He catches you when you wobble, just for a brief second. That’s when he realises where his hand is, and he pulls back sharply. 

“I trust Her Highness can make her own way over,” he mutters, stalking away before you can say another word.

Gnats buzz at your ear and you bring your wrist up to rub them away as you watch him. When you finally catch up, you set the tupperware on the stump, handing Arthur the Horlicks flask and dropping the cooler bag on the ground. 

“Ooh,” Arthur says, smiling widely and hurrying to unscrew the cap. He draws a deep sniff through his nose and sighs blissfully. "A cup for you, my boy?”

Remus looks less than impressed. 

“Have you got nowt else for us?”

He doesn’t even look up at you when he says it, just turns his attention back to the cloth in his hands and the dirt he’s trying to rub off them. Well then.

“There’s water or Ribena,” you say blandly, nudging the cooler bag over to him with your foot. “That’s your lot.”

You don’t see if he reacts, turning your back on him and prying open the lid. 

Then, from over your shoulder and with disinterest;

“Ta.”

You watch Arthur as he leans back in his foldable lawn chair. Should you sit down? Are you supposed to? Your endeavours have caught up with you and you’re exhausted, blinking sluggishly. 

“What time is it?” you wonder, distracted by a small bird flailing above a tree just down the way. 

“What do I look like, a bloody sundial?”

You’re half surprised he heard you as you weren’t sure you actually said it out loud. If you had the energy to care, you would. Instead, you sit down on the grass beside Arthur’s chair and tuck your knees to your side. 

“Must be awful for the Lovegoods to have people fly-tipping on their lot,” you say, in an effort to make conversation. 

“Oh, no, dear,” Arthur replies animatedly in-between bites, “this is all theirs. They like to collect things, the Lovegoods. They’ve just run out of places to put things.”

‘A bin’ is the first place that comes to mind when you spot the tattered mattress and the curled wires of an old radiator, but knowing the state of Arthur’s shed, you don’t dare say it out loud. But as your eyes accidentally land on Remus, you know you’re not the only one. 

You didn’t mean to look at him.

The odd chew and swallow are the only things to be heard for the next while. You sit twisting blades of grass and pulling them up, plaiting them together in a makeshift braid that falls apart when you try to knot it. The blades are too dry; they split and break and fray.

You almost lose track of the light as you stumble down the slopes again, veering into tree trunks and tripping over roots and dips and holes. Arthur had asked if you wanted to stay and catch a lift back with them in the truck, but then Remus said something snarky - you can’t remember what - and you figured you’d be better off just heading off yourself. Your eyes glaze over as you find relief in the dusk, head pounding at a steady rhythm matched by your footsteps and ticking away the time it takes you to make it down. 

By the time you’ve stumbled over the doorstep to the kitchen, Molly’s gripped your arm and shoved the back of her hand against your forehead. Seconds later, you’re lying face down on a mattress in a cool, dark room. Just as your eyes begin to black out, you feel your gut squeeze around itself. 

Did you eat today?

Straight out the gate, your head’s ringing like a bitch. 

There’s a bee, or a wasp, or something, caught between the curtain and the window pane, buzzing loudly. You don’t know how it got there; you don’t crack the window at night, specifically to keep the bugs out, but judging by the foul taste in your mouth, the sweat on your brow, and the way your eyes screw shut at the slightest glimpse of sunlight bouncing off the wooden walls in your room, you might have to think of something else. 

You feel nauseous as you shift towards the end of the bed, clutching the bedsheet feebly to your chest. Your hands feel kinda numb. It takes you a few tries to get the window lock open; your hands keep slipping off the small, metal latch. You don’t realise how hot it is until the first trickle of cool breeze seeps in through the crack. Under your arms, your breasts, your knees, you’re slick with sweat, head throbbing heavily. 

Unsurprisingly, Remus is nowhere to be seen when you finally tiptoe out of your room. The grooves of the wooden floor are cool and uneven against the soles of your feet as you make your way outside. The front door creaks something awful when you undo the lock and push it open. Rough fibres of cloth and bristles scrub away at your skin and under your nails. The water’s delightfully cold when you finally bring the basin over your head and wash away the soap and grime.

There’s no sign of him at the big house, either. That’s three days he’s been away now. Haven’t seen him since you caught a glimpse of him over your shoulder, shunting an old mattress onto the back of Arthur’s truck as you set off down the sloping fields again. Something in your brain tugs at the memory of the way the sunlight glinted off his bare arms. 

You look around the ground floor; Molly and Arthur have taken the kids up to Molly’s cousin’s for a few days for a family reunion. You barely remembered anything the morning after you passed out, waking up in a dark, musty room in the top landing from Molly tugging gently at your arm, filling you in on the impromptu plans and informing you that there was a casserole for you and Remus left on the stove for later. You half-thought you’d dreamt it when you woke up again hours later, only fitting the puzzle pieces together when you realised you’d been conscious for five minutes without hearing a single raised voice. It’s strange to see the place so empty, but the opportunity to give it a good airing out without screaming children and clutter flying all over the place is too good an opportunity to miss.

You’ve really been working this place the past three days; clutter is almost completely gone, all you have left is the floors and carpets, maybe some curtains, and opening every window in this building to breathe new life into it. Your hands are raw from soaps and detergents, pins and needles prick at your arms and legs. You take it easy, moving down the hall with careful and intentional steps. Your clothes smell of sweat and they’re stiff with grime, and you realise they’re the ones you wore yesterday. You don’t think of much while you eat. Not much comes to mind, really, other than how tired you feel and your desperate need to do some laundry. 

You set the swollen laundry basket down next to the washer. You don’t know how the day’s gone by so fast. There is not a speck of dust left in the place. Turns out it’s a lot easier to do a deep clean when you don’t have seven children running around the place every hour of every day. Maybe that’d be the way to do it, you think as you shove clothes into the machine. Make it a regular thing. Now that you’re helping out, it seems like a missed opportunity. 

You shrug out of your clothes, peeling your bra and underwear off and tossing them into the now almost-full machine. Rhythmic humming vibrates through the floorboards as you make your way to the airing cupboard for a towel. Lukewarm water soothes your skin, fingertips easing the headache you’ve been staving off all day as you lather and rinse. You get distracted as you dry yourself off, pressing softly at the skin on your cheeks and under your eyes to bring some feeling back in your face. You stare at the mirror for a while. The washer’s done by the time you make it back downstairs; your underwear and bra are almost dry from the spin cycle so you pull them on, ditch the towel, and pull the rest of the clothes into the basin. 

The sun is on the last of its maximum effort when you push open the kitchen door and make your way to the clothes line. There’s no one around; other than Molly and Arthur’s lot, you haven’t seen another soul since you arrived. Today’s been an absolute sweltering mess; staying indoors has meant you’ve had at least some semblance of shade, and you can’t imagine many others are braving the scorching temperatures to leg it all the way into the middle of nowhere to drop by in the middle of the work week. 

You hang the clothes on the line as the sun slowly begins to set, relishing in the cool relief of fresh air on your skin that’s still slightly warm with sunburn. You rest a hand on the back of a plastic garden chair as you watch the colours flit across the sky, and in this moment you feel like you could just stay here, right here, forever. The deep breath you take in through your nose is sweet and full, calming your beating heart as you gently exhale. It’s just you, the sun, and the birds flying in a pattern only they know over the tops of the trees in the distance. You watch as the tip of the tail of the last bird disappears over the horizon. 

“Some view to come home to, that.”

Shit. 

You forgot about him.

Your neck almost cracks as you whip around. He’s leaning against the corner of the house - he must have come from the town road - arms crossed with narrowed, unkind eyes. It’s glaringly obvious that he’s not talking about the birds, nor is he talking about the sunset that’s nearing its end behind you. 

You grab the nearest thing you see, ripping it off the line and bolting for the kitchen. The plastic pegs scatter among the tufts of grass, a rogue sock slipping off the line in the scuffle. He pushes himself off the wall in less than a heartbeat and sprints, beating you to the door by a second and reaching to lean against the doorframe just as you try to push through. He doesn’t budge. You tug the dress over your head, hair tousled and eyes looking anywhere but him as you ignore the bits of gravel that dig into the soles of your feet. You try to push through again, a bit more sophisticated now in your damp decency, but he still does not budge. 

You feel his gaze on your face. It burns. All of it. Your skin, your hair, your nails, your eyeballs, it all burns. You’ve half a mind to grab the bristled brush from the farmhouse and start scrubbing until you see red. Your skin itches with it. You can’t even say he’s looking at you cheekily, not even with a semblance of lust. It’s sheer arrogance, eyes sparkling with the delight of having put you in a position of distress. Like it’s a treat for him to make you feel this way. 

“Let me though,” you mutter, eyes locked on the kitchen beyond his outstretched arm. 

“Oh, now-”

“I’m serious, let-”

“Why the rush? I mean, you’ve been fine out here for so long,” he says, feigning concern. The hubris in his voice makes you feel physically ill. So, he’s been watching you for a while, then. The greater the effort, the greater the reward, it would seem. 

“Tea’s not gonna put itself on,” you insist, gripping his forearm weakly and attempting to pull it off the frame. Any relief you felt on your skin is long gone, the burning, sweltering sensation has returned tenfold.

After a minute or two he indulges you, standing up so you can just about squeeze past. 

“Wouldn’t want to go hungry, would we?”

You ignore him as you pull a saucepan out from under the counter and accidentally slam it onto the stovetop. You try not to think of him standing there, watching your every movement. The day that had seemed so liberating suddenly seems so far away. A thought strikes you as you grab the container out of the fridge, has he been on the drink? 

You scoop spoonfuls of casserole into the saucepan. More than half of it remains in the container once you’re done; Molly had calculated portions for the both of you, but he hasn’t been in at all. 

Your hands move on autopilot, twisting unsuccessfully at the lid of the jar of radishes Molly insisted you finish before they got home. 

"Come on," you mutter under your breath, slamming the lip of the jar on the edge of the wooden table. 

"Well, Jesus, don't whack it like that,” Remus huffs, snatching it from your grip. You hadn’t even noticed him cross the room. He pops the lid off and hands it back to you wordlessly, taking a seat at the table and pulling a paperback from his jacket pocket. 

He reads while he eats. He’s half done before you even pick up your fork. You push your food around your plate, the day’s heat putting a permanent damper on most of your appetite, humiliation taking care of the rest. There’s a low hum in the air.

“You make this?”

It’s so monotonous you’re not even sure he said anything. 

“Hm?”

He swallows, eyes not lifting from the yellowed pages. 

“D’you make this?”

You stare at him for a second. Your shoulders tense; undoubtedly he’s found something to criticise you for.

“Why?”

He frowns, then looks up. Then he shrugs.

“It’s nice.”

You blink. 

“Oh.”

You stare at each other for a minute, before he raises his eyebrows as if to say “well?”

“No,” you say slowly. “No. Uh, Molly did.”

He grunts in response. 

You watch as he takes both his plate and your own and heads over to the sink. Plates washed, he dries his hands with the towel slung over one of the chairs and picks up his book. Your eyes don’t leave him for a second as he takes a seat on the step leading out to the garden. He stretches his legs out, back leaning against the doorframe and the book settled snugly between his fingers, resting in his palm. 

A strange feeling comes over you as you sit and watch him. It’s a sensitive thing, a body’s  memory. Sitting in this kitchen, staring out as the final remnants of a sunset paint the sky, you feel tugs at the end of your mind. Flashes of young children running about the house, barefoot with dirty soles from playing in the grass all day. Plastic cups with faded floral patterns on them, resting on the kitchen table, filled with water turned lukewarm in the heat. And a small, slender, freckled boy with green eyes and dark blond hair, hands outstretched to pull you with him. Eyes wide and eager to show you the ropes, the feeling of bark underneath your palms and scrapes that bleed and burn on your knees. 

You see the boy again, but he’s taller now, more confident. He’s starting to grow into his features now. He avoids looking at you when he can, clammy hands no longer outstretched, no longer eager to pull you with him. Content to leave you behind. The sun still beats down on the grass, its yellowing tips crunching slightly under your toes. 

You see him again, older and broader, but this is where your tolerance ends. You cannot, will not reminisce. You tear your eyes away from him and wipe your palms on your dress. 

But it’s too late. There’s a sharp pain in your stomach, and you’ve wandered into dangerous territory. However you knew him before, however he knew you, it’s gone. Gone are the eyes that used to steal quick glances when they thought no one noticed. Gone are the slight and innocent touches, gone is the feeling of warmth, the feeling of mattering, the feeling of hope. Gone is the boy who made you feel like you meant something to him. 

Your heart aches. Then you pull yourself up. You may not know him now, but you knew him then. And surely that must count for something.

The breeze that sweeps across your skin as you step over the ledge and take a seat on the step is cool and fresh. You stretch your legs out, crossing at the ankles, and lean against the other side of the doorframe. The ache of the day’s physical efforts starts to sink in, and you let your eyelids slowly fall shut.

You hear the light brushes as he turns each page. Once the last light starts to disappear from behind your eyelids, you slowly open them again, turning your head slightly so your eyes land on him. His features are poorly lit, his outline glowing from the golden reach of the kitchen light. A slight frown makes itself known as his eyes skim over the page.

“What?” he says quietly, looking over in your direction but not meeting your eyeline. 

You didn’t think he’d noticed. You stifle a grunt as you push yourself off the corroded stone step, small, sharp bits of gravel sticking into your palms. 

“Just thought you might want some company,” you mutter. 

Without looking his way, you start walking and don’t stop until you reach the farm house.

Molly says you can move in permanently if you want. That they’d be happy to have you, but they just don’t know what you’d want with a derelict, old farmhouse. She doesn’t mean it. You can’t imagine she means it. She’s just being polite. But it’s sparked a train of thought in you, a train of thought that for the first time ever imagines a reality in which you have a life; a job, family, maybe even friends if you play your cards right. A reality where you have other people around you, who actually want to be around you and find you interesting, and funny, and smart.   

You find yourself imagining pieces of furniture in the front room, lighting fires in the stove and the smells of stews and pies and fresh air and green grass. Maybe a dog, or a goat, or something. Maybe a cat. You could get to town from here; Molly and Arthur would definitely let you catch a lift in the mornings, and you could walk to theirs from here no problem. Maybe you could get a bike. You’d need one to get in and out of town, to do your shopping. You could put a basket on the front, or have Arthur fasten a wooden crate to it. He’d definitely want to. Maybe you could even get your own licence; a proper one, and a car to go with it. You could get a kitchen put in. An indoor bathroom. Slowly but surely, piece by piece, plank by plank, the whole place could come together. 

The kids could come by. It’d be like having neighbours. They would be neighbours, and you could watch them when Molly and Arthur were busy. You could teach them how to plant vegetables and flowers. You could learn how to plant vegetables and flowers. Carve out a little spot for an allotment. There’s enough field to go round, and you’ve got the woodlands right down the road. 

Then the slam of the front door shutting behind you echoes in the empty space, and your head gets real quiet. 

Jesus Christ.

A loud thud sends you reeling, gasping sharply for air as you jerk out of your tumultuous sleep and roll unceremoniously off the edge of your bed. It doesn’t even hurt properly, not sharply, just a dull ache that rings in your joints as soon as you manage to heave yourself onto your feet again. 

It’s still dark out; the deep shadow against the curtain tells you as much. Squinting, you edge towards the door. But there’s a groan; a loud, pained groan that sounds so vulnerable that you can’t help but be curious.

His head doesn’t even lift to look at you.

“You look…”

Awful.

He’s had the shit kicked out of him. You can barely see him in the dim light, but you can see the way he cradles one arm with the other, like he’s pulled something. He stumbles over obstacles that aren’t even there, careening into the wall with another crash that prompts you into movement. 

“Yeah, I…”

Then he tips forward dangerously; your arm shoots out to grab him, but he catches himself before you make contact. The world around you moves in slow motion; you don’t know how long it takes for your eyes to focus back on him. Knuckles whitening, he grips the doorframe and hauls himself up again. 

You could just leave him. He hung around for a few days after the Weasleys got back, after which he disappeared again. You haven’t seen or heard him since. Molly and Arthur don’t seem too phased by his coming and going. “You know what young men are like. As long as he gets his work done, there’s no harm done.”

Wordlessly, you prop him against your shoulder, wrapping an arm around his waist as you all but drag him into his room, stumbling under his weight. He slumps over the moment he hits the edge of the mattress, head dropping to the sheets. You sink to your knees beside him on the floor, rubbing your eyes with the heels of your palms and willing away the drowsiness that dances along the outskirts of your line of vision. 

You’re still half asleep and it’s weird. His room is weird. It smells weird. Like him. There’s two of him now. With the sleep meds you’re on, you’re surprised you’re upright at all. If you’re his best shot, he’s fucked.

“We should wake someone,” you murmur hazily, shifting to push yourself upwards. 

“No, no,” he slurs, hand clamping down on your shoulder with surprising force.

“Remus, I’m-”

“I know,” he sighs, one eye opening to look at you, “I can see it in your eyes, Y/N.” Then, a lazy smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth as he leans in so close his nose almost bumps against yours. “You’re pretty when you’re doped.”

He’s too fucked for it to be even remotely attractive. Even in your drowsy state, you’re wrinkling your nose and repressing a grimace. 

“What’s hap-”

He hushes you loudly. 

“So loud.”

A warm hand comes up sluggishly to rest on your head. You can barely feel the way his thumb only just manages to stroke your hair, but the movement lulls you into a trance, time slowing to a still.

“Wha…” you frown, “why is your hand wet?”

Your hand slips up to grab his wrist, but he pulls away.

“S’not,” he mumbles, barely audible over the sound of him wiping his palm on his shirt.

“It’s in my hair,” you sigh, slipping your own fingers through the strands. “Oh, please, just, tell me it’s not something disgusting.” 

His eyes widen almost comically.

“Christ, no, s’only my nosebleed,” he exclaims, trying to sit up. He’s too woozy, doubles over, knocking your forehead painfully with his own and almost knocking you out with the force of it.

“Ow,” you mutter, rubbing your forehead with the heel of your palm. 

“Some prick…” he grumbles, clutching his head. “I think he might’ve broken it n’ all.”

“Well don’t touch it,” you say, reaching up to grab his finger before he has a chance to prod at the bridge of his nose. Then, softer, this time; “Do you really think it’s broken?”

Remus shakes his head, sighing heavily and leaning back to rest his head against the pillow. 

“Nah.”

“You sure? You should get it checked-”

He shushes you loudly, hand flinging out at random to swat at yours. 

“Go to bed.”

“Too tired,” you sigh, putting your head in your hands. 

“Jus’ lie down here, then,” he mumbles, eyes closed, the edges of his words softened with sleep as his hand comes up to rest firmly against the back and side of your head. He pulls you towards him, head landing awkwardly against his chest. It’s really uncomfortable, but you’re too tired to care. You can’t even formulate a final thought before sleep puts you under again.

It’s his snores that wake you up. It’s unsurprising; you hear him every now and again through the wall, but this is more aggressive. Must be the nosebleed. 

You get up, back stiff from a night of twisted sleep, rubbing your eyes and sneaking a glimpse out beyond the curtain. Your eyes dart to the body in the bed, all but dead to the world.

“Fuck…” you mutter under your breath, running a hand through your hair. Then you frown, fingers coming away with clumps of dark red. The mirror on the wall is cracked, but you can clearly see your hair matted with what you remember to be blood, though it takes you a minute to remember how it got there.

You wash and head up to the house. You’ve errands to run with Molly. When you come back, he’s gone. 

You spot him later that same afternoon, carrying beams on his shoulder from the barn to the truck with Arthur. He looks worse for wear, you can see that from here. Got a black eye, by the looks of it. He’s supporting the beams with his right arm, wrapping it around the planks as they balance on his right shoulder. 

Isn’t he left-handed?

The sounds of feet hitting gravel are the only noise to be heard except for the odd grunt coming from the barn approaching on your right.

“-and that shoulder’ll be back to normal in no time, my boy,” Arthur remarks, heaving a sack into the back of the truck. He greets you cheerily as you pass, asking about your day. You remind him dinner’ll be in an hour. You glance to his left, discreetly as you can. If Remus notices you’re there, he doesn’t show it.

“Come on, I’ll treat you!”

Arthur beams up at you, well-intentional as ever. It’s busy in town, even for a Saturday evening. 

“I don’t, uh…” You pause, trying to think of a viable excuse.

“Come on.”

He opens the door to the pub and holds it open wide, indicating for you to go inside. There’s no way out, you suppose. As exhausted as you are from a full day of running errands, you’re in no position to turn him down. Molly’s got dinner planned in about two hours, so you won’t be here long. You brace yourself for the sensory overload and step towards him.

Something Molly said in passing a few days ago comes to mind as you push towards the bar. “Oh, they’re rowdy, those boys are. Harmless,” she’d nodded, “but rowdy.”

Not that harmless, you think. What’d Remus told her, then? Fell into a ditch, or something. That’ll be it; he fell into a ditch on the walk home from town. Or even better: climbed over a wall for a short cut and fell, landing right on his shoulder. Crunch. 

You don’t get a black eye from falling off a wall, though. Either Molly is a different level of gullible, or she’s ignoring it on purpose. He is a grown man, after all. Maybe you’re the only one acting like she’s your parent.

Arthur leans in, “They do a brilliant pie and mash. You hungry?”

“Oh,” you say, avoiding his gaze and ignoring the way your palms threaten to sweat, “Uh… Isn’t Molly cooking?”

“Hungry for a snack, me,” he grins. “Pork scratchings?”

You shake your head on impulse. 

“Packet of crisps? Cheese and onion? Salt and vinegar?”

Head shake. Head shake. Head shake. 

“Something to drink? Pint? Glass of wine? Water?”

“Water,” you interject before he can continue. “Glass of water, please.”

“Right you are,” he smiles, turning to the bar expectantly and tapping his fingertips against the surface as he waits with wide eyes. You shift your weight from one foot to the other as you stand awkwardly behind him. Are you hovering? You feel like you’re hovering. Your imposter syndrome is having a field day. 

“Busy today,” Arthur remarks, pulling a face and looking around. “Why don’t you go find us somewhere to sit down, dear?”

You nod before you know what you’re doing. You look around a bit too quickly, not actually seeing what it is you’re looking for. The back of your neck starts burning, so you panic and beeline in a random direction. There’s people everywhere today; you see a table in the corner, a small one with two mismatched chairs, one of wood and one of a tattered, green velvet- 

And that’s when you see him. Two tables away, with a group of three other lads and a couple of girls. The redhead is making him laugh. 

A lot. 

He’s pretty when he laughs. It’s a lot nicer than the scowl that seems permanently etched into his features up at the house. Here, he seems young; happy, even, grinning into his pint and ducking away from one of his friends as he swats at him. You can barely see the bruising on his face, now. In this light, he looks just like his old self. 

You stand there for a split second, preparing to back away any second now, but it’s long enough for you to catch his eye. Any trace of the smirk on his face dies immediately. It makes you feel sick. He looks away quickly and nods at the redhead, bringing his pint up to his lips. 

You might vomit.

It’s overcast today, for the first time in well over a week, but that doesn’t stop the heat rising from the earth like steam trapped in a saucepan, clouds forming a heavy lid over the dome of your existence. You can feel your heartbeat in your ears, your heavy pants the only sound in an otherwise windless expanse. A bead of sweat trickles down your temple, rubbed away by a brisk forearm that you can barely bear to lift. All the clothes you have, bar what you had on your back the day you arrived, are hand-me-downs that Molly’s been generous enough to offer you. It’s almost exclusively skirts; long and flowy with patterns in browns, greens, and oranges that match her hair. Long skirts that she was going to give away anyway, so you don’t have to worry about getting grass stains or dirty marks on them. Your thighs have begun to chafe and as much as you’re enjoying the pain now, like some sort of sweet release and a reminder that you’re alive, you’re afraid of how you’re gonna feel after. Because right now, beneath the bright grey sky and fields that span on as far as the eye can see, it’s hard to picture an ‘after’. 

But the after finally comes, and it comes in the form of two dark dots moving above the stone walls in the distance. They’re by a tree stump near the outskirts of the field when you reach the wall. You can see what they’ve been clearing, now; someone’s been fly-tipping. There’s a path leading into some bushes near the biggest heap of junk; the road they drove up on must be just out the other side. 

Arthur smiles brightly when he sees you, giving you an animated wave despite the ruddy cheeks that indicate his fatigue. 

“Excellent timing, my dear. Come!”

Remus is too far away for you to see the look on his face, and maybe you don’t want to look. But you’re happy to take a breather as they make their way towards you, your mouth dry and your breathing almost hoarse. You’ve barely had cause to see him since the bucket incident a few days ago. 

Arthur reaches you first, gesturing to the stone wall that separates you. 

“It’s a bit of a tall one, I’m afraid, and there’s no way round unless you walk all the way up to the car, but Remus’ll help you over in a jiffy. Won’t you, lad?”

Remus grumbles something unintelligible in response.

“Here, I’ll take that…”

Free of the tupperware, you’ve a hand free to shift your skirt. The seam’s twisted round to your front, and the label that’s supposed to be at the back is now digging itchily into the flesh of your hip. You smooth the fabric down, ignoring how prickly and oddly numb your fingertips feel.

“Well, come on, then.”

You blink stupidly. You’d forgotten about the logistics of getting over. Admittedly, climbing a wall might be the thing that finally tips your fatigue over the edge. 

“What… What do you want me to-”

“Oh, for fuck-”

He presses his palms against the top of the wall and pushes himself up over it with ease, landing beside you in a second. You turn to face him, but next thing you know his hands are pressing into your waist and he’s hoisted you up in the air like some rag doll, seating you atop the uneven stones. The straps of the cooler bag dig into your palms as you clumsily swing your legs over the other side and you concentrate on the burn for the second it takes him to jump back over. He doesn’t need to help you down, it’s just a simple drop, but his hand makes its way to the small of your back like it’s on instinct. 

You stand so close together when your feet touch the ground that you can smell the sweat and humidity off him, but it’s a grounding smell. He catches you when you wobble, just for a brief second. That’s when he realises where his hand is, and he pulls back sharply. 

“I trust Her Highness can make her own way over,” he mutters, stalking away before you can say another word.

Gnats buzz at your ear and you bring your wrist up to rub them away as you watch him. When you finally catch up, you set the tupperware on the stump, handing Arthur the Horlicks flask and dropping the cooler bag on the ground. 

“Ooh,” Arthur says, smiling widely and hurrying to unscrew the cap. He draws a deep sniff through his nose and sighs blissfully. "A cup for you, my boy?”

Remus looks less than impressed. 

“Have you got nowt else for us?”

He doesn’t even look up at you when he says it, just turns his attention back to the cloth in his hands and the dirt he’s trying to rub off them. Well then.

“There’s water or Ribena,” you say blandly, nudging the cooler bag over to him with your foot. “That’s your lot.”

You don’t see if he reacts, turning your back on him and prying open the lid. 

Then, from over your shoulder and with disinterest;

“Ta.”

You watch Arthur as he leans back in his foldable lawn chair. Should you sit down? Are you supposed to? Your endeavours have caught up with you and you’re exhausted, blinking sluggishly. 

“What time is it?” you wonder, distracted by a small bird flailing above a tree just down the way. 

“What do I look like, a bloody sundial?”

You’re half surprised he heard you as you weren’t sure you actually said it out loud. If you had the energy to care, you would. Instead, you sit down on the grass beside Arthur’s chair and tuck your knees to your side. 

“Must be awful for the Lovegoods to have people fly-tipping on their lot,” you say, in an effort to make conversation. 

“Oh, no, dear,” Arthur replies animatedly in-between bites, “this is all theirs. They like to collect things, the Lovegoods. They’ve just run out of places to put things.”

‘A bin’ is the first place that comes to mind when you spot the tattered mattress and the curled wires of an old radiator, but knowing the state of Arthur’s shed, you don’t dare say it out loud. But as your eyes accidentally land on Remus, you know you’re not the only one. 

You didn’t mean to look at him.

The odd chew and swallow are the only things to be heard for the next while. You sit twisting blades of grass and pulling them up, plaiting them together in a makeshift braid that falls apart when you try to knot it. The blades are too dry; they split and break and fray.

You almost lose track of the light as you stumble down the slopes again, veering into tree trunks and tripping over roots and dips and holes. Arthur had asked if you wanted to stay and catch a lift back with them in the truck, but then Remus said something snarky - you can’t remember what - and you figured you’d be better off just heading off yourself. Your eyes glaze over as you find relief in the dusk, head pounding at a steady rhythm matched by your footsteps and ticking away the time it takes you to make it down. 

By the time you’ve stumbled over the doorstep to the kitchen, Molly’s gripped your arm and shoved the back of her hand against your forehead. Seconds later, you’re lying face down on a mattress in a cool, dark room. Just as your eyes begin to black out, you feel your gut squeeze around itself. 

Did you eat today?

Straight out the gate, your head’s ringing like a bitch. 

There’s a bee, or a wasp, or something, caught between the curtain and the window pane, buzzing loudly. You don’t know how it got there; you don’t crack the window at night, specifically to keep the bugs out, but judging by the foul taste in your mouth, the sweat on your brow, and the way your eyes screw shut at the slightest glimpse of sunlight bouncing off the wooden walls in your room, you might have to think of something else. 

You feel nauseous as you shift towards the end of the bed, clutching the bedsheet feebly to your chest. Your hands feel kinda numb. It takes you a few tries to get the window lock open; your hands keep slipping off the small, metal latch. You don’t realise how hot it is until the first trickle of cool breeze seeps in through the crack. Under your arms, your breasts, your knees, you’re slick with sweat, head throbbing heavily. 

Unsurprisingly, Remus is nowhere to be seen when you finally tiptoe out of your room. The grooves of the wooden floor are cool and uneven against the soles of your feet as you make your way outside. The front door creaks something awful when you undo the lock and push it open. Rough fibres of cloth and bristles scrub away at your skin and under your nails. The water’s delightfully cold when you finally bring the basin over your head and wash away the soap and grime.

There’s no sign of him at the big house, either. That’s three days he’s been away now. Haven’t seen him since you caught a glimpse of him over your shoulder, shunting an old mattress onto the back of Arthur’s truck as you set off down the sloping fields again. Something in your brain tugs at the memory of the way the sunlight glinted off his bare arms. 

You look around the ground floor; Molly and Arthur have taken the kids up to Molly’s cousin’s for a few days for a family reunion. You barely remembered anything the morning after you passed out, waking up in a dark, musty room in the top landing from Molly tugging gently at your arm, filling you in on the impromptu plans and informing you that there was a casserole for you and Remus left on the stove for later. You half-thought you’d dreamt it when you woke up again hours later, only fitting the puzzle pieces together when you realised you’d been conscious for five minutes without hearing a single raised voice. It’s strange to see the place so empty, but the opportunity to give it a good airing out without screaming children and clutter flying all over the place is too good an opportunity to miss.

You’ve really been working this place the past three days; clutter is almost completely gone, all you have left is the floors and carpets, maybe some curtains, and opening every window in this building to breathe new life into it. Your hands are raw from soaps and detergents, pins and needles prick at your arms and legs. You take it easy, moving down the hall with careful and intentional steps. Your clothes smell of sweat and they’re stiff with grime, and you realise they’re the ones you wore yesterday. You don’t think of much while you eat. Not much comes to mind, really, other than how tired you feel and your desperate need to do some laundry. 

You set the swollen laundry basket down next to the washer. You don’t know how the day’s gone by so fast. There is not a speck of dust left in the place. Turns out it’s a lot easier to do a deep clean when you don’t have seven children running around the place every hour of every day. Maybe that’d be the way to do it, you think as you shove clothes into the machine. Make it a regular thing. Now that you’re helping out, it seems like a missed opportunity. 

You shrug out of your clothes, peeling your bra and underwear off and tossing them into the now almost-full machine. Rhythmic humming vibrates through the floorboards as you make your way to the airing cupboard for a towel. Lukewarm water soothes your skin, fingertips easing the headache you’ve been staving off all day as you lather and rinse. You get distracted as you dry yourself off, pressing softly at the skin on your cheeks and under your eyes to bring some feeling back in your face. You stare at the mirror for a while. The washer’s done by the time you make it back downstairs; your underwear and bra are almost dry from the spin cycle so you pull them on, ditch the towel, and pull the rest of the clothes into the basin. 

The sun is on the last of its maximum effort when you push open the kitchen door and make your way to the clothes line. There’s no one around; other than Molly and Arthur’s lot, you haven’t seen another soul since you arrived. Today’s been an absolute sweltering mess; staying indoors has meant you’ve had at least some semblance of shade, and you can’t imagine many others are braving the scorching temperatures to leg it all the way into the middle of nowhere to drop by in the middle of the work week. 

You hang the clothes on the line as the sun slowly begins to set, relishing in the cool relief of fresh air on your skin that’s still slightly warm with sunburn. You rest a hand on the back of a plastic garden chair as you watch the colours flit across the sky, and in this moment you feel like you could just stay here, right here, forever. The deep breath you take in through your nose is sweet and full, calming your beating heart as you gently exhale. It’s just you, the sun, and the birds flying in a pattern only they know over the tops of the trees in the distance. You watch as the tip of the tail of the last bird disappears over the horizon. 

“Some view to come home to, that.”

Shit. 

You forgot about him.

Your neck almost cracks as you whip around. He’s leaning against the corner of the house - he must have come from the town road - arms crossed with narrowed, unkind eyes. It’s glaringly obvious that he’s not talking about the birds, nor is he talking about the sunset that’s nearing its end behind you. 

You grab the nearest thing you see, ripping it off the line and bolting for the kitchen. The plastic pegs scatter among the tufts of grass, a rogue sock slipping off the line in the scuffle. He pushes himself off the wall in less than a heartbeat and sprints, beating you to the door by a second and reaching to lean against the doorframe just as you try to push through. He doesn’t budge. You tug the dress over your head, hair tousled and eyes looking anywhere but him as you ignore the bits of gravel that dig into the soles of your feet. You try to push through again, a bit more sophisticated now in your damp decency, but he still does not budge. 

You feel his gaze on your face. It burns. All of it. Your skin, your hair, your nails, your eyeballs, it all burns. You’ve half a mind to grab the bristled brush from the farmhouse and start scrubbing until you see red. Your skin itches with it. You can’t even say he’s looking at you cheekily, not even with a semblance of lust. It’s sheer arrogance, eyes sparkling with the delight of having put you in a position of distress. Like it’s a treat for him to make you feel this way. 

“Let me though,” you mutter, eyes locked on the kitchen beyond his outstretched arm. 

“Oh, now-”

“I’m serious, let-”

“Why the rush? I mean, you’ve been fine out here for so long,” he says, feigning concern. The hubris in his voice makes you feel physically ill. So, he’s been watching you for a while, then. The greater the effort, the greater the reward, it would seem. 

“Tea’s not gonna put itself on,” you insist, gripping his forearm weakly and attempting to pull it off the frame. Any relief you felt on your skin is long gone, the burning, sweltering sensation has returned tenfold.

After a minute or two he indulges you, standing up so you can just about squeeze past. 

“Wouldn’t want to go hungry, would we?”

You ignore him as you pull a saucepan out from under the counter and accidentally slam it onto the stovetop. You try not to think of him standing there, watching your every movement. The day that had seemed so liberating suddenly seems so far away. A thought strikes you as you grab the container out of the fridge, has he been on the drink? 

You scoop spoonfuls of casserole into the saucepan. More than half of it remains in the container once you’re done; Molly had calculated portions for the both of you, but he hasn’t been in at all. 

Your hands move on autopilot, twisting unsuccessfully at the lid of the jar of radishes Molly insisted you finish before they got home. 

"Come on," you mutter under your breath, slamming the lip of the jar on the edge of the wooden table. 

"Well, Jesus, don't whack it like that,” Remus huffs, snatching it from your grip. You hadn’t even noticed him cross the room. He pops the lid off and hands it back to you wordlessly, taking a seat at the table and pulling a paperback from his jacket pocket. 

He reads while he eats. He’s half done before you even pick up your fork. You push your food around your plate, the day’s heat putting a permanent damper on most of your appetite, humiliation taking care of the rest. There’s a low hum in the air.

“You make this?”

It’s so monotonous you’re not even sure he said anything. 

“Hm?”

He swallows, eyes not lifting from the yellowed pages. 

“D’you make this?”

You stare at him for a second. Your shoulders tense; undoubtedly he’s found something to criticise you for.

“Why?”

He frowns, then looks up. Then he shrugs.

“It’s nice.”

You blink. 

“Oh.”

You stare at each other for a minute, before he raises his eyebrows as if to say “well?”

“No,” you say slowly. “No. Uh, Molly did.”

He grunts in response. 

You watch as he takes both his plate and your own and heads over to the sink. Plates washed, he dries his hands with the towel slung over one of the chairs and picks up his book. Your eyes don’t leave him for a second as he takes a seat on the step leading out to the garden. He stretches his legs out, back leaning against the doorframe and the book settled snugly between his fingers, resting in his palm. 

A strange feeling comes over you as you sit and watch him. It’s a sensitive thing, a body’s  memory. Sitting in this kitchen, staring out as the final remnants of a sunset paint the sky, you feel tugs at the end of your mind. Flashes of young children running about the house, barefoot with dirty soles from playing in the grass all day. Plastic cups with faded floral patterns on them, resting on the kitchen table, filled with water turned lukewarm in the heat. And a small, slender, freckled boy with green eyes and dark blond hair, hands outstretched to pull you with him. Eyes wide and eager to show you the ropes, the feeling of bark underneath your palms and scrapes that bleed and burn on your knees. 

You see the boy again, but he’s taller now, more confident. He’s starting to grow into his features now. He avoids looking at you when he can, clammy hands no longer outstretched, no longer eager to pull you with him. Content to leave you behind. The sun still beats down on the grass, its yellowing tips crunching slightly under your toes. 

You see him again, older and broader, but this is where your tolerance ends. You cannot, will not reminisce. You tear your eyes away from him and wipe your palms on your dress. 

But it’s too late. There’s a sharp pain in your stomach, and you’ve wandered into dangerous territory. However you knew him before, however he knew you, it’s gone. Gone are the eyes that used to steal quick glances when they thought no one noticed. Gone are the slight and innocent touches, gone is the feeling of warmth, the feeling of mattering, the feeling of hope. Gone is the boy who made you feel like you meant something to him. 

Your heart aches. Then you pull yourself up. You may not know him now, but you knew him then. And surely that must count for something.

The breeze that sweeps across your skin as you step over the ledge and take a seat on the step is cool and fresh. You stretch your legs out, crossing at the ankles, and lean against the other side of the doorframe. The ache of the day’s physical efforts starts to sink in, and you let your eyelids slowly fall shut.

You hear the light brushes as he turns each page. Once the last light starts to disappear from behind your eyelids, you slowly open them again, turning your head slightly so your eyes land on him. His features are poorly lit, his outline glowing from the golden reach of the kitchen light. A slight frown makes itself known as his eyes skim over the page.

“What?” he says quietly, looking over in your direction but not meeting your eyeline. 

You didn’t think he’d noticed. You stifle a grunt as you push yourself off the corroded stone step, small, sharp bits of gravel sticking into your palms. 

“Just thought you might want some company,” you mutter. 

Without looking his way, you start walking and don’t stop until you reach the farm house.

Molly says you can move in permanently if you want. That they’d be happy to have you, but they just don’t know what you’d want with a derelict, old farmhouse. She doesn’t mean it. You can’t imagine she means it. She’s just being polite. But it’s sparked a train of thought in you, a train of thought that for the first time ever imagines a reality in which you have a life; a job, family, maybe even friends if you play your cards right. A reality where you have other people around you, who actually want to be around you and find you interesting, and funny, and smart.   

You find yourself imagining pieces of furniture in the front room, lighting fires in the stove and the smells of stews and pies and fresh air and green grass. Maybe a dog, or a goat, or something. Maybe a cat. You could get to town from here; Molly and Arthur would definitely let you catch a lift in the mornings, and you could walk to theirs from here no problem. Maybe you could get a bike. You’d need one to get in and out of town, to do your shopping. You could put a basket on the front, or have Arthur fasten a wooden crate to it. He’d definitely want to. Maybe you could even get your own licence; a proper one, and a car to go with it. You could get a kitchen put in. An indoor bathroom. Slowly but surely, piece by piece, plank by plank, the whole place could come together. 

The kids could come by. It’d be like having neighbours. They would be neighbours, and you could watch them when Molly and Arthur were busy. You could teach them how to plant vegetables and flowers. You could learn how to plant vegetables and flowers. Carve out a little spot for an allotment. There’s enough field to go round, and you’ve got the woodlands right down the road. 

Then the slam of the front door shutting behind you echoes in the empty space, and your head gets real quiet. 

Jesus Christ.

A loud thud sends you reeling, gasping sharply for air as you jerk out of your tumultuous sleep and roll unceremoniously off the edge of your bed. It doesn’t even hurt properly, not sharply, just a dull ache that rings in your joints as soon as you manage to heave yourself onto your feet again. 

It’s still dark out; the deep shadow against the curtain tells you as much. Squinting, you edge towards the door. But there’s a groan; a loud, pained groan that sounds so vulnerable that you can’t help but be curious.

His head doesn’t even lift to look at you.

“You look…”

Awful.

He’s had the shit kicked out of him. You can barely see him in the dim light, but you can see the way he cradles one arm with the other, like he’s pulled something. He stumbles over obstacles that aren’t even there, careening into the wall with another crash that prompts you into movement. 

“Yeah, I…”

Then he tips forward dangerously; your arm shoots out to grab him, but he catches himself before you make contact. The world around you moves in slow motion; you don’t know how long it takes for your eyes to focus back on him. Knuckles whitening, he grips the doorframe and hauls himself up again. 

You could just leave him. He hung around for a few days after the Weasleys got back, after which he disappeared again. You haven’t seen or heard him since. Molly and Arthur don’t seem too phased by his coming and going. “You know what young men are like. As long as he gets his work done, there’s no harm done.”

Wordlessly, you prop him against your shoulder, wrapping an arm around his waist as you all but drag him into his room, stumbling under his weight. He slumps over the moment he hits the edge of the mattress, head dropping to the sheets. You sink to your knees beside him on the floor, rubbing your eyes with the heels of your palms and willing away the drowsiness that dances along the outskirts of your line of vision. 

You’re still half asleep and it’s weird. His room is weird. It smells weird. Like him. There’s two of him now. With the sleep meds you’re on, you’re surprised you’re upright at all. If you’re his best shot, he’s fucked.

“We should wake someone,” you murmur hazily, shifting to push yourself upwards. 

“No, no,” he slurs, hand clamping down on your shoulder with surprising force.

“Remus, I’m-”

“I know,” he sighs, one eye opening to look at you, “I can see it in your eyes, Y/N.” Then, a lazy smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth as he leans in so close his nose almost bumps against yours. “You’re pretty when you’re doped.”

He’s too fucked for it to be even remotely attractive. Even in your drowsy state, you’re wrinkling your nose and repressing a grimace. 

“What’s hap-”

He hushes you loudly. 

“So loud.”

A warm hand comes up sluggishly to rest on your head. You can barely feel the way his thumb only just manages to stroke your hair, but the movement lulls you into a trance, time slowing to a still.

“Wha…” you frown, “why is your hand wet?”

Your hand slips up to grab his wrist, but he pulls away.

“S’not,” he mumbles, barely audible over the sound of him wiping his palm on his shirt.

“It’s in my hair,” you sigh, slipping your own fingers through the strands. “Oh, please, just, tell me it’s not something disgusting.” 

His eyes widen almost comically.

“Christ, no, s’only my nosebleed,” he exclaims, trying to sit up. He’s too woozy, doubles over, knocking your forehead painfully with his own and almost knocking you out with the force of it.

“Ow,” you mutter, rubbing your forehead with the heel of your palm. 

“Some prick…” he grumbles, clutching his head. “I think he might’ve broken it n’ all.”

“Well don’t touch it,” you say, reaching up to grab his finger before he has a chance to prod at the bridge of his nose. Then, softer, this time; “Do you really think it’s broken?”

Remus shakes his head, sighing heavily and leaning back to rest his head against the pillow. 

“Nah.”

“You sure? You should get it checked-”

He shushes you loudly, hand flinging out at random to swat at yours. 

“Go to bed.”

“Too tired,” you sigh, putting your head in your hands. 

“Jus’ lie down here, then,” he mumbles, eyes closed, the edges of his words softened with sleep as his hand comes up to rest firmly against the back and side of your head. He pulls you towards him, head landing awkwardly against his chest. It’s really uncomfortable, but you’re too tired to care. You can’t even formulate a final thought before sleep puts you under again.

It’s his snores that wake you up. It’s unsurprising; you hear him every now and again through the wall, but this is more aggressive. Must be the nosebleed. 

You get up, back stiff from a night of twisted sleep, rubbing your eyes and sneaking a glimpse out beyond the curtain. Your eyes dart to the body in the bed, all but dead to the world.

“Fuck…” you mutter under your breath, running a hand through your hair. Then you frown, fingers coming away with clumps of dark red. The mirror on the wall is cracked, but you can clearly see your hair matted with what you remember to be blood, though it takes you a minute to remember how it got there.

You wash and head up to the house. You’ve errands to run with Molly. When you come back, he’s gone. 

You spot him later that same afternoon, carrying beams on his shoulder from the barn to the truck with Arthur. He looks worse for wear, you can see that from here. Got a black eye, by the looks of it. He’s supporting the beams with his right arm, wrapping it around the planks as they balance on his right shoulder. 

Isn’t he left-handed?

The sounds of feet hitting gravel are the only noise to be heard except for the odd grunt coming from the barn approaching on your right.

“-and that shoulder’ll be back to normal in no time, my boy,” Arthur remarks, heaving a sack into the back of the truck. He greets you cheerily as you pass, asking about your day. You remind him dinner’ll be in an hour. You glance to his left, discreetly as you can. If Remus notices you’re there, he doesn’t show it.

“Come on, I’ll treat you!”

Arthur beams up at you, well-intentional as ever. It’s busy in town, even for a Saturday evening. 

“I don’t, uh…” You pause, trying to think of a viable excuse.

“Come on.”

He opens the door to the pub and holds it open wide, indicating for you to go inside. There’s no way out, you suppose. As exhausted as you are from a full day of running errands, you’re in no position to turn him down. Molly’s got dinner planned in about two hours, so you won’t be here long. You brace yourself for the sensory overload and step towards him.

Something Molly said in passing a few days ago comes to mind as you push towards the bar. “Oh, they’re rowdy, those boys are. Harmless,” she’d nodded, “but rowdy.”

Not that harmless, you think. What’d Remus told her, then? Fell into a ditch, or something. That’ll be it; he fell into a ditch on the walk home from town. Or even better: climbed over a wall for a short cut and fell, landing right on his shoulder. Crunch. 

You don’t get a black eye from falling off a wall, though. Either Molly is a different level of gullible, or she’s ignoring it on purpose. He is a grown man, after all. Maybe you’re the only one acting like she’s your parent.

Arthur leans in, “They do a brilliant pie and mash. You hungry?”

“Oh,” you say, avoiding his gaze and ignoring the way your palms threaten to sweat, “Uh… Isn’t Molly cooking?”

“Hungry for a snack, me,” he grins. “Pork scratchings?”

You shake your head on impulse. 

“Packet of crisps? Cheese and onion? Salt and vinegar?”

Head shake. Head shake. Head shake. 

“Something to drink? Pint? Glass of wine? Water?”

“Water,” you interject before he can continue. “Glass of water, please.”

“Right you are,” he smiles, turning to the bar expectantly and tapping his fingertips against the surface as he waits with wide eyes. You shift your weight from one foot to the other as you stand awkwardly behind him. Are you hovering? You feel like you’re hovering. Your imposter syndrome is having a field day. 

“Busy today,” Arthur remarks, pulling a face and looking around. “Why don’t you go find us somewhere to sit down, dear?”

You nod before you know what you’re doing. You look around a bit too quickly, not actually seeing what it is you’re looking for. The back of your neck starts burning, so you panic and beeline in a random direction. There’s people everywhere today; you see a table in the corner, a small one with two mismatched chairs, one of wood and one of a tattered, green velvet- 

And that’s when you see him. Two tables away, with a group of three other lads and a couple of girls. The redhead is making him laugh. 

A lot. 

He’s pretty when he laughs. It’s a lot nicer than the scowl that seems permanently etched into his features up at the house. Here, he seems young; happy, even, grinning into his pint and ducking away from one of his friends as he swats at him. You can barely see the bruising on his face, now. In this light, he looks just like his old self. 

You stand there for a split second, preparing to back away any second now, but it’s long enough for you to catch his eye. Any trace of the smirk on his face dies immediately. It makes you feel sick. He looks away quickly and nods at the redhead, bringing his pint up to his lips. 

You might vomit.

It’s overcast today, for the first time in well over a week, but that doesn’t stop the heat rising from the earth like steam trapped in a saucepan, clouds forming a heavy lid over the dome of your existence. You can feel your heartbeat in your ears, your heavy pants the only sound in an otherwise windless expanse. A bead of sweat trickles down your temple, rubbed away by a brisk forearm that you can barely bear to lift. All the clothes you have, bar what you had on your back the day you arrived, are hand-me-downs that Molly’s been generous enough to offer you. It’s almost exclusively skirts; long and flowy with patterns in browns, greens, and oranges that match her hair. Long skirts that she was going to give away anyway, so you don’t have to worry about getting grass stains or dirty marks on them. Your thighs have begun to chafe and as much as you’re enjoying the pain now, like some sort of sweet release and a reminder that you’re alive, you’re afraid of how you’re gonna feel after. Because right now, beneath the bright grey sky and fields that span on as far as the eye can see, it’s hard to picture an ‘after’. 

But the after finally comes, and it comes in the form of two dark dots moving above the stone walls in the distance. They’re by a tree stump near the outskirts of the field when you reach the wall. You can see what they’ve been clearing, now; someone’s been fly-tipping. There’s a path leading into some bushes near the biggest heap of junk; the road they drove up on must be just out the other side. 

Arthur smiles brightly when he sees you, giving you an animated wave despite the ruddy cheeks that indicate his fatigue. 

“Excellent timing, my dear. Come!”

Remus is too far away for you to see the look on his face, and maybe you don’t want to look. But you’re happy to take a breather as they make their way towards you, your mouth dry and your breathing almost hoarse. You’ve barely had cause to see him since the bucket incident a few days ago. 

Arthur reaches you first, gesturing to the stone wall that separates you. 

“It’s a bit of a tall one, I’m afraid, and there’s no way round unless you walk all the way up to the car, but Remus’ll help you over in a jiffy. Won’t you, lad?”

Remus grumbles something unintelligible in response.

“Here, I’ll take that…”

Free of the tupperware, you’ve a hand free to shift your skirt. The seam’s twisted round to your front, and the label that’s supposed to be at the back is now digging itchily into the flesh of your hip. You smooth the fabric down, ignoring how prickly and oddly numb your fingertips feel.

“Well, come on, then.”

You blink stupidly. You’d forgotten about the logistics of getting over. Admittedly, climbing a wall might be the thing that finally tips your fatigue over the edge. 

“What… What do you want me to-”

“Oh, for fuck-”

He presses his palms against the top of the wall and pushes himself up over it with ease, landing beside you in a second. You turn to face him, but next thing you know his hands are pressing into your waist and he’s hoisted you up in the air like some rag doll, seating you atop the uneven stones. The straps of the cooler bag dig into your palms as you clumsily swing your legs over the other side and you concentrate on the burn for the second it takes him to jump back over. He doesn’t need to help you down, it’s just a simple drop, but his hand makes its way to the small of your back like it’s on instinct. 

You stand so close together when your feet touch the ground that you can smell the sweat and humidity off him, but it’s a grounding smell. He catches you when you wobble, just for a brief second. That’s when he realises where his hand is, and he pulls back sharply. 

“I trust Her Highness can make her own way over,” he mutters, stalking away before you can say another word.

Gnats buzz at your ear and you bring your wrist up to rub them away as you watch him. When you finally catch up, you set the tupperware on the stump, handing Arthur the Horlicks flask and dropping the cooler bag on the ground. 

“Ooh,” Arthur says, smiling widely and hurrying to unscrew the cap. He draws a deep sniff through his nose and sighs blissfully. "A cup for you, my boy?”

Remus looks less than impressed. 

“Have you got nowt else for us?”

He doesn’t even look up at you when he says it, just turns his attention back to the cloth in his hands and the dirt he’s trying to rub off them. Well then.

“There’s water or Ribena,” you say blandly, nudging the cooler bag over to him with your foot. “That’s your lot.”

You don’t see if he reacts, turning your back on him and prying open the lid. 

Then, from over your shoulder and with disinterest;

“Ta.”

You watch Arthur as he leans back in his foldable lawn chair. Should you sit down? Are you supposed to? Your endeavours have caught up with you and you’re exhausted, blinking sluggishly. 

“What time is it?” you wonder, distracted by a small bird flailing above a tree just down the way. 

“What do I look like, a bloody sundial?”

You’re half surprised he heard you as you weren’t sure you actually said it out loud. If you had the energy to care, you would. Instead, you sit down on the grass beside Arthur’s chair and tuck your knees to your side. 

“Must be awful for the Lovegoods to have people fly-tipping on their lot,” you say, in an effort to make conversation. 

“Oh, no, dear,” Arthur replies animatedly in-between bites, “this is all theirs. They like to collect things, the Lovegoods. They’ve just run out of places to put things.”

‘A bin’ is the first place that comes to mind when you spot the tattered mattress and the curled wires of an old radiator, but knowing the state of Arthur’s shed, you don’t dare say it out loud. But as your eyes accidentally land on Remus, you know you’re not the only one. 

You didn’t mean to look at him.

The odd chew and swallow are the only things to be heard for the next while. You sit twisting blades of grass and pulling them up, plaiting them together in a makeshift braid that falls apart when you try to knot it. The blades are too dry; they split and break and fray.

You almost lose track of the light as you stumble down the slopes again, veering into tree trunks and tripping over roots and dips and holes. Arthur had asked if you wanted to stay and catch a lift back with them in the truck, but then Remus said something snarky - you can’t remember what - and you figured you’d be better off just heading off yourself. Your eyes glaze over as you find relief in the dusk, head pounding at a steady rhythm matched by your footsteps and ticking away the time it takes you to make it down. 

By the time you’ve stumbled over the doorstep to the kitchen, Molly’s gripped your arm and shoved the back of her hand against your forehead. Seconds later, you’re lying face down on a mattress in a cool, dark room. Just as your eyes begin to black out, you feel your gut squeeze around itself. 

Did you eat today?

Straight out the gate, your head’s ringing like a bitch. 

There’s a bee, or a wasp, or something, caught between the curtain and the window pane, buzzing loudly. You don’t know how it got there; you don’t crack the window at night, specifically to keep the bugs out, but judging by the foul taste in your mouth, the sweat on your brow, and the way your eyes screw shut at the slightest glimpse of sunlight bouncing off the wooden walls in your room, you might have to think of something else. 

You feel nauseous as you shift towards the end of the bed, clutching the bedsheet feebly to your chest. Your hands feel kinda numb. It takes you a few tries to get the window lock open; your hands keep slipping off the small, metal latch. You don’t realise how hot it is until the first trickle of cool breeze seeps in through the crack. Under your arms, your breasts, your knees, you’re slick with sweat, head throbbing heavily. 

Unsurprisingly, Remus is nowhere to be seen when you finally tiptoe out of your room. The grooves of the wooden floor are cool and uneven against the soles of your feet as you make your way outside. The front door creaks something awful when you undo the lock and push it open. Rough fibres of cloth and bristles scrub away at your skin and under your nails. The water’s delightfully cold when you finally bring the basin over your head and wash away the soap and grime.

There’s no sign of him at the big house, either. That’s three days he’s been away now. Haven’t seen him since you caught a glimpse of him over your shoulder, shunting an old mattress onto the back of Arthur’s truck as you set off down the sloping fields again. Something in your brain tugs at the memory of the way the sunlight glinted off his bare arms. 

You look around the ground floor; Molly and Arthur have taken the kids up to Molly’s cousin’s for a few days for a family reunion. You barely remembered anything the morning after you passed out, waking up in a dark, musty room in the top landing from Molly tugging gently at your arm, filling you in on the impromptu plans and informing you that there was a casserole for you and Remus left on the stove for later. You half-thought you’d dreamt it when you woke up again hours later, only fitting the puzzle pieces together when you realised you’d been conscious for five minutes without hearing a single raised voice. It’s strange to see the place so empty, but the opportunity to give it a good airing out without screaming children and clutter flying all over the place is too good an opportunity to miss.

You’ve really been working this place the past three days; clutter is almost completely gone, all you have left is the floors and carpets, maybe some curtains, and opening every window in this building to breathe new life into it. Your hands are raw from soaps and detergents, pins and needles prick at your arms and legs. You take it easy, moving down the hall with careful and intentional steps. Your clothes smell of sweat and they’re stiff with grime, and you realise they’re the ones you wore yesterday. You don’t think of much while you eat. Not much comes to mind, really, other than how tired you feel and your desperate need to do some laundry. 

You set the swollen laundry basket down next to the washer. You don’t know how the day’s gone by so fast. There is not a speck of dust left in the place. Turns out it’s a lot easier to do a deep clean when you don’t have seven children running around the place every hour of every day. Maybe that’d be the way to do it, you think as you shove clothes into the machine. Make it a regular thing. Now that you’re helping out, it seems like a missed opportunity. 

You shrug out of your clothes, peeling your bra and underwear off and tossing them into the now almost-full machine. Rhythmic humming vibrates through the floorboards as you make your way to the airing cupboard for a towel. Lukewarm water soothes your skin, fingertips easing the headache you’ve been staving off all day as you lather and rinse. You get distracted as you dry yourself off, pressing softly at the skin on your cheeks and under your eyes to bring some feeling back in your face. You stare at the mirror for a while. The washer’s done by the time you make it back downstairs; your underwear and bra are almost dry from the spin cycle so you pull them on, ditch the towel, and pull the rest of the clothes into the basin. 

The sun is on the last of its maximum effort when you push open the kitchen door and make your way to the clothes line. There’s no one around; other than Molly and Arthur’s lot, you haven’t seen another soul since you arrived. Today’s been an absolute sweltering mess; staying indoors has meant you’ve had at least some semblance of shade, and you can’t imagine many others are braving the scorching temperatures to leg it all the way into the middle of nowhere to drop by in the middle of the work week. 

You hang the clothes on the line as the sun slowly begins to set, relishing in the cool relief of fresh air on your skin that’s still slightly warm with sunburn. You rest a hand on the back of a plastic garden chair as you watch the colours flit across the sky, and in this moment you feel like you could just stay here, right here, forever. The deep breath you take in through your nose is sweet and full, calming your beating heart as you gently exhale. It’s just you, the sun, and the birds flying in a pattern only they know over the tops of the trees in the distance. You watch as the tip of the tail of the last bird disappears over the horizon. 

“Some view to come home to, that.”

Shit. 

You forgot about him.

Your neck almost cracks as you whip around. He’s leaning against the corner of the house - he must have come from the town road - arms crossed with narrowed, unkind eyes. It’s glaringly obvious that he’s not talking about the birds, nor is he talking about the sunset that’s nearing its end behind you. 

You grab the nearest thing you see, ripping it off the line and bolting for the kitchen. The plastic pegs scatter among the tufts of grass, a rogue sock slipping off the line in the scuffle. He pushes himself off the wall in less than a heartbeat and sprints, beating you to the door by a second and reaching to lean against the doorframe just as you try to push through. He doesn’t budge. You tug the dress over your head, hair tousled and eyes looking anywhere but him as you ignore the bits of gravel that dig into the soles of your feet. You try to push through again, a bit more sophisticated now in your damp decency, but he still does not budge. 

You feel his gaze on your face. It burns. All of it. Your skin, your hair, your nails, your eyeballs, it all burns. You’ve half a mind to grab the bristled brush from the farmhouse and start scrubbing until you see red. Your skin itches with it. You can’t even say he’s looking at you cheekily, not even with a semblance of lust. It’s sheer arrogance, eyes sparkling with the delight of having put you in a position of distress. Like it’s a treat for him to make you feel this way. 

“Let me though,” you mutter, eyes locked on the kitchen beyond his outstretched arm. 

“Oh, now-”

“I’m serious, let-”

“Why the rush? I mean, you’ve been fine out here for so long,” he says, feigning concern. The hubris in his voice makes you feel physically ill. So, he’s been watching you for a while, then. The greater the effort, the greater the reward, it would seem. 

“Tea’s not gonna put itself on,” you insist, gripping his forearm weakly and attempting to pull it off the frame. Any relief you felt on your skin is long gone, the burning, sweltering sensation has returned tenfold.

After a minute or two he indulges you, standing up so you can just about squeeze past. 

“Wouldn’t want to go hungry, would we?”

You ignore him as you pull a saucepan out from under the counter and accidentally slam it onto the stovetop. You try not to think of him standing there, watching your every movement. The day that had seemed so liberating suddenly seems so far away. A thought strikes you as you grab the container out of the fridge, has he been on the drink? 

You scoop spoonfuls of casserole into the saucepan. More than half of it remains in the container once you’re done; Molly had calculated portions for the both of you, but he hasn’t been in at all. 

Your hands move on autopilot, twisting unsuccessfully at the lid of the jar of radishes Molly insisted you finish before they got home. 

"Come on," you mutter under your breath, slamming the lip of the jar on the edge of the wooden table. 

"Well, Jesus, don't whack it like that,” Remus huffs, snatching it from your grip. You hadn’t even noticed him cross the room. He pops the lid off and hands it back to you wordlessly, taking a seat at the table and pulling a paperback from his jacket pocket. 

He reads while he eats. He’s half done before you even pick up your fork. You push your food around your plate, the day’s heat putting a permanent damper on most of your appetite, humiliation taking care of the rest. There’s a low hum in the air.

“You make this?”

It’s so monotonous you’re not even sure he said anything. 

“Hm?”

He swallows, eyes not lifting from the yellowed pages. 

“D’you make this?”

You stare at him for a second. Your shoulders tense; undoubtedly he’s found something to criticise you for.

“Why?”

He frowns, then looks up. Then he shrugs.

“It’s nice.”

You blink. 

“Oh.”

You stare at each other for a minute, before he raises his eyebrows as if to say “well?”

“No,” you say slowly. “No. Uh, Molly did.”

He grunts in response. 

You watch as he takes both his plate and your own and heads over to the sink. Plates washed, he dries his hands with the towel slung over one of the chairs and picks up his book. Your eyes don’t leave him for a second as he takes a seat on the step leading out to the garden. He stretches his legs out, back leaning against the doorframe and the book settled snugly between his fingers, resting in his palm. 

A strange feeling comes over you as you sit and watch him. It’s a sensitive thing, a body’s  memory. Sitting in this kitchen, staring out as the final remnants of a sunset paint the sky, you feel tugs at the end of your mind. Flashes of young children running about the house, barefoot with dirty soles from playing in the grass all day. Plastic cups with faded floral patterns on them, resting on the kitchen table, filled with water turned lukewarm in the heat. And a small, slender, freckled boy with green eyes and dark blond hair, hands outstretched to pull you with him. Eyes wide and eager to show you the ropes, the feeling of bark underneath your palms and scrapes that bleed and burn on your knees. 

You see the boy again, but he’s taller now, more confident. He’s starting to grow into his features now. He avoids looking at you when he can, clammy hands no longer outstretched, no longer eager to pull you with him. Content to leave you behind. The sun still beats down on the grass, its yellowing tips crunching slightly under your toes. 

You see him again, older and broader, but this is where your tolerance ends. You cannot, will not reminisce. You tear your eyes away from him and wipe your palms on your dress. 

But it’s too late. There’s a sharp pain in your stomach, and you’ve wandered into dangerous territory. However you knew him before, however he knew you, it’s gone. Gone are the eyes that used to steal quick glances when they thought no one noticed. Gone are the slight and innocent touches, gone is the feeling of warmth, the feeling of mattering, the feeling of hope. Gone is the boy who made you feel like you meant something to him. 

Your heart aches. Then you pull yourself up. You may not know him now, but you knew him then. And surely that must count for something.

The breeze that sweeps across your skin as you step over the ledge and take a seat on the step is cool and fresh. You stretch your legs out, crossing at the ankles, and lean against the other side of the doorframe. The ache of the day’s physical efforts starts to sink in, and you let your eyelids slowly fall shut.

You hear the light brushes as he turns each page. Once the last light starts to disappear from behind your eyelids, you slowly open them again, turning your head slightly so your eyes land on him. His features are poorly lit, his outline glowing from the golden reach of the kitchen light. A slight frown makes itself known as his eyes skim over the page.

“What?” he says quietly, looking over in your direction but not meeting your eyeline. 

You didn’t think he’d noticed. You stifle a grunt as you push yourself off the corroded stone step, small, sharp bits of gravel sticking into your palms. 

“Just thought you might want some company,” you mutter. 

Without looking his way, you start walking and don’t stop until you reach the farm house.

Molly says you can move in permanently if you want. That they’d be happy to have you, but they just don’t know what you’d want with a derelict, old farmhouse. She doesn’t mean it. You can’t imagine she means it. She’s just being polite. But it’s sparked a train of thought in you, a train of thought that for the first time ever imagines a reality in which you have a life; a job, family, maybe even friends if you play your cards right. A reality where you have other people around you, who actually want to be around you and find you interesting, and funny, and smart.   

You find yourself imagining pieces of furniture in the front room, lighting fires in the stove and the smells of stews and pies and fresh air and green grass. Maybe a dog, or a goat, or something. Maybe a cat. You could get to town from here; Molly and Arthur would definitely let you catch a lift in the mornings, and you could walk to theirs from here no problem. Maybe you could get a bike. You’d need one to get in and out of town, to do your shopping. You could put a basket on the front, or have Arthur fasten a wooden crate to it. He’d definitely want to. Maybe you could even get your own licence; a proper one, and a car to go with it. You could get a kitchen put in. An indoor bathroom. Slowly but surely, piece by piece, plank by plank, the whole place could come together. 

The kids could come by. It’d be like having neighbours. They would be neighbours, and you could watch them when Molly and Arthur were busy. You could teach them how to plant vegetables and flowers. You could learn how to plant vegetables and flowers. Carve out a little spot for an allotment. There’s enough field to go round, and you’ve got the woodlands right down the road. 

Then the slam of the front door shutting behind you echoes in the empty space, and your head gets real quiet. 

Jesus Christ.

A loud thud sends you reeling, gasping sharply for air as you jerk out of your tumultuous sleep and roll unceremoniously off the edge of your bed. It doesn’t even hurt properly, not sharply, just a dull ache that rings in your joints as soon as you manage to heave yourself onto your feet again. 

It’s still dark out; the deep shadow against the curtain tells you as much. Squinting, you edge towards the door. But there’s a groan; a loud, pained groan that sounds so vulnerable that you can’t help but be curious.

His head doesn’t even lift to look at you.

“You look…”

Awful.

He’s had the shit kicked out of him. You can barely see him in the dim light, but you can see the way he cradles one arm with the other, like he’s pulled something. He stumbles over obstacles that aren’t even there, careening into the wall with another crash that prompts you into movement. 

“Yeah, I…”

Then he tips forward dangerously; your arm shoots out to grab him, but he catches himself before you make contact. The world around you moves in slow motion; you don’t know how long it takes for your eyes to focus back on him. Knuckles whitening, he grips the doorframe and hauls himself up again. 

You could just leave him. He hung around for a few days after the Weasleys got back, after which he disappeared again. You haven’t seen or heard him since. Molly and Arthur don’t seem too phased by his coming and going. “You know what young men are like. As long as he gets his work done, there’s no harm done.”

Wordlessly, you prop him against your shoulder, wrapping an arm around his waist as you all but drag him into his room, stumbling under his weight. He slumps over the moment he hits the edge of the mattress, head dropping to the sheets. You sink to your knees beside him on the floor, rubbing your eyes with the heels of your palms and willing away the drowsiness that dances along the outskirts of your line of vision. 

You’re still half asleep and it’s weird. His room is weird. It smells weird. Like him. There’s two of him now. With the sleep meds you’re on, you’re surprised you’re upright at all. If you’re his best shot, he’s fucked.

“We should wake someone,” you murmur hazily, shifting to push yourself upwards. 

“No, no,” he slurs, hand clamping down on your shoulder with surprising force.

“Remus, I’m-”

“I know,” he sighs, one eye opening to look at you, “I can see it in your eyes, Y/N.” Then, a lazy smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth as he leans in so close his nose almost bumps against yours. “You’re pretty when you’re doped.”

He’s too fucked for it to be even remotely attractive. Even in your drowsy state, you’re wrinkling your nose and repressing a grimace. 

“What’s hap-”

He hushes you loudly. 

“So loud.”

A warm hand comes up sluggishly to rest on your head. You can barely feel the way his thumb only just manages to stroke your hair, but the movement lulls you into a trance, time slowing to a still.

“Wha…” you frown, “why is your hand wet?”

Your hand slips up to grab his wrist, but he pulls away.

“S’not,” he mumbles, barely audible over the sound of him wiping his palm on his shirt.

“It’s in my hair,” you sigh, slipping your own fingers through the strands. “Oh, please, just, tell me it’s not something disgusting.” 

His eyes widen almost comically.

“Christ, no, s’only my nosebleed,” he exclaims, trying to sit up. He’s too woozy, doubles over, knocking your forehead painfully with his own and almost knocking you out with the force of it.

“Ow,” you mutter, rubbing your forehead with the heel of your palm. 

“Some prick…” he grumbles, clutching his head. “I think he might’ve broken it n’ all.”

“Well don’t touch it,” you say, reaching up to grab his finger before he has a chance to prod at the bridge of his nose. Then, softer, this time; “Do you really think it’s broken?”

Remus shakes his head, sighing heavily and leaning back to rest his head against the pillow. 

“Nah.”

“You sure? You should get it checked-”

He shushes you loudly, hand flinging out at random to swat at yours. 

“Go to bed.”

“Too tired,” you sigh, putting your head in your hands. 

“Jus’ lie down here, then,” he mumbles, eyes closed, the edges of his words softened with sleep as his hand comes up to rest firmly against the back and side of your head. He pulls you towards him, head landing awkwardly against his chest. It’s really uncomfortable, but you’re too tired to care. You can’t even formulate a final thought before sleep puts you under again.

It’s his snores that wake you up. It’s unsurprising; you hear him every now and again through the wall, but this is more aggressive. Must be the nosebleed. 

You get up, back stiff from a night of twisted sleep, rubbing your eyes and sneaking a glimpse out beyond the curtain. Your eyes dart to the body in the bed, all but dead to the world.

“Fuck…” you mutter under your breath, running a hand through your hair. Then you frown, fingers coming away with clumps of dark red. The mirror on the wall is cracked, but you can clearly see your hair matted with what you remember to be blood, though it takes you a minute to remember how it got there.

You wash and head up to the house. You’ve errands to run with Molly. When you come back, he’s gone. 

You spot him later that same afternoon, carrying beams on his shoulder from the barn to the truck with Arthur. He looks worse for wear, you can see that from here. Got a black eye, by the looks of it. He’s supporting the beams with his right arm, wrapping it around the planks as they balance on his right shoulder. 

Isn’t he left-handed?

The sounds of feet hitting gravel are the only noise to be heard except for the odd grunt coming from the barn approaching on your right.

“-and that shoulder’ll be back to normal in no time, my boy,” Arthur remarks, heaving a sack into the back of the truck. He greets you cheerily as you pass, asking about your day. You remind him dinner’ll be in an hour. You glance to his left, discreetly as you can. If Remus notices you’re there, he doesn’t show it.

“Come on, I’ll treat you!”

Arthur beams up at you, well-intentional as ever. It’s busy in town, even for a Saturday evening. 

“I don’t, uh…” You pause, trying to think of a viable excuse.

“Come on.”

He opens the door to the pub and holds it open wide, indicating for you to go inside. There’s no way out, you suppose. As exhausted as you are from a full day of running errands, you’re in no position to turn him down. Molly’s got dinner planned in about two hours, so you won’t be here long. You brace yourself for the sensory overload and step towards him.

Something Molly said in passing a few days ago comes to mind as you push towards the bar. “Oh, they’re rowdy, those boys are. Harmless,” she’d nodded, “but rowdy.”

Not that harmless, you think. What’d Remus told her, then? Fell into a ditch, or something. That’ll be it; he fell into a ditch on the walk home from town. Or even better: climbed over a wall for a short cut and fell, landing right on his shoulder. Crunch. 

You don’t get a black eye from falling off a wall, though. Either Molly is a different level of gullible, or she’s ignoring it on purpose. He is a grown man, after all. Maybe you’re the only one acting like she’s your parent.

Arthur leans in, “They do a brilliant pie and mash. You hungry?”

“Oh,” you say, avoiding his gaze and ignoring the way your palms threaten to sweat, “Uh… Isn’t Molly cooking?”

“Hungry for a snack, me,” he grins. “Pork scratchings?”

You shake your head on impulse. 

“Packet of crisps? Cheese and onion? Salt and vinegar?”

Head shake. Head shake. Head shake. 

“Something to drink? Pint? Glass of wine? Water?”

“Water,” you interject before he can continue. “Glass of water, please.”

“Right you are,” he smiles, turning to the bar expectantly and tapping his fingertips against the surface as he waits with wide eyes. You shift your weight from one foot to the other as you stand awkwardly behind him. Are you hovering? You feel like you’re hovering. Your imposter syndrome is having a field day. 

“Busy today,” Arthur remarks, pulling a face and looking around. “Why don’t you go find us somewhere to sit down, dear?”

You nod before you know what you’re doing. You look around a bit too quickly, not actually seeing what it is you’re looking for. The back of your neck starts burning, so you panic and beeline in a random direction. There’s people everywhere today; you see a table in the corner, a small one with two mismatched chairs, one of wood and one of a tattered, green velvet- 

And that’s when you see him. Two tables away, with a group of three other lads and a couple of girls. The redhead is making him laugh. 

A lot. 

He’s pretty when he laughs. It’s a lot nicer than the scowl that seems permanently etched into his features up at the house. Here, he seems young; happy, even, grinning into his pint and ducking away from one of his friends as he swats at him. You can barely see the bruising on his face, now. In this light, he looks just like his old self. 

You stand there for a split second, preparing to back away any second now, but it’s long enough for you to catch his eye. Any trace of the smirk on his face dies immediately. It makes you feel sick. He looks away quickly and nods at the redhead, bringing his pint up to his lips. 

You might vomit.

It’s just the travel. Travel, and inhaling shit air, and eating shit food, and being all cramped up. You’re not even sure you ate. Hard to tell when each day bleeds into the next and time goes by a million miles an hour and not at all. 

Small feet and hands dig into the flesh of your thighs and stomach. The twins settle either side of your waist, gurgling and babbling to themselves. You sit in silence, staring at a patch of carpet, restless nails picking at frayed threads on the tattered armrest. Someone enters the room, voices speak, but it all sounds muffled. It isn’t until Molly pushes a saucer of biscuits under your nose that you come to, blinking heavily and mumbling disjointedly.

“Thank you.”

Molly glances at the clock on the wall. It’s got nine hands, one for Molly, one for Arthur, and one for each of the children. Does she keep a stack of them in a drawer somewhere, to add one on whenever a new one comes along?

“It’s getting late,” she mutters. 

Is it?

The thought that you might be keeping them up gnaws at you. You’re about to offer to retire for the evening, to apologise and head off, when Arthur stands. He hums, brows furrowed as though in deep thought, and shuffles into the hallway. As the air grows heavy with silence, your gaze rests back on Molly. 

“You know, I might just…”

The words die on your lips. They must have barely been audible, anyway, judging by Molly’s lack of reaction.

The odd child meanders into the room as you wait for Arthur to return. Bill’s at that age where you pretend you’re an adult, unsurprised and unscared. He barely spares you a second glance as he steps over to his mother, asking for the whereabouts of his book on Britain’s Most Dangerous Deepwater Sea-Creatures. 

Charlie’s not quite there yet, lingering in the hallway and peeking around the doorframe with wide eyes and a long, floppy, pink tongue. It’s the toy in his hands that catches your eye, a bright green dragon with blue spikes and huge eyes. He holds it around its neck so tight it might just pop off. 

You beckon him over. His eyes dart to his mother, then back to you, then back to his mother. Then he steels himself and tiptoes towards you.

“Y/N.”

He blinks. He looks like he’s going to chicken out and back away. 

You pull your hand away from the mouth of a teething George, wiping his saliva off on your sleeve and reaching behind your head. Lifting one of the many pendants from around your neck, you slip the chain onto your finger and hold it out to the seven year old in front of you.

“It’s yours, if you want it,” you say softly.

He eyes it timidly, looking up at you, then down at the pendant, then up at you, then back down at the pendant. The pendant’s a photo coin you bought at a museum gift shop when you were young; it’s got a celtic dragon pressed into its centre and waves decorating the rim.

“Take it,” you whisper. 

He smiles shyly, before snatching the chain with clumsy hands and shuffling away, not taking his eyes off of it for a second. The movement excites the twins, who squeal, and giggle, and squirm in your arms. One of them accidentally slaps you in the face. The other tries to shove their hand in your face, getting their hand stuck in your necklaces. 

“Come here,” you sigh, taking the soft, small, pudgy hand in yours to ease it out of the knot of chains. 

Four heavy knocks pound somewhere in the distance. 

The chains have gotten caught up in your hair, now. The child tugs, and you lurch, dangerously close to getting your fingers tangled up in the mess. 

A door slams in the distance. The bairn pulls his hand back, threatening to take a chunk of your scalp out with it. You grab hold of his hand again, murmuring for him to keep still, to relax, to stop pulling-

Then, from the doorway, with a kind lilt and a Yorkshire accent that makes your blood run cold as ice, comes a soft, deep voice, and surely you must be ill. Surely, you must have caught some fatal, delayed-onset disease, because the fever that burns at your skin, rippling in waves and numbing your wrists, is anything short of natural.

It hurts. It actually hurts. 

“Where’d you like ‘em, Molly?”

You might pass out. Jesus, you can hear your heartbeat squelching in your ears. You can vaguely hear Molly fussing about the time and we were beginning to think you weren’t coming back tonight and- 

Back? 

Soft, small hands slap at your wrists when they notice your attention has drifted. 

What does she mean, back? 

You’re still trying to untangle the knot in your hair, fingertips trying and failing to set you free. You can just about see the lower half of him where you sit, hunched over, with toddler spit trailing down your forearm and a fist in your hair. You can see the way his shirt sleeves have been rolled up to his elbows; see the sprigs of some kind of plant poking out from the handles of one of the plastic bags in his hands. 

He’s grown. Lived. Thrived, even, by the looks of things. 

It’s the smallest thing, but it fucks with your head. You haven’t grown, or lived, or thrived at all. You’re small. Ratty. Shrivelled, even, by the looks of things. 

As you finally detangle the child’s fingers from your hair, you get a proper look at him. He looks like he has friends. But not like he has to make any effort to keep them. Not even that; like it’s effortless for him to keep them. Like he’s got that kind of quiet magnetism. He looks like the type of guy someone else randomly brings to a night out and every friend of a friend tries to chat him up. Like he barely needs to say a word, but everyone still knows who he is and greets him when they see him.

What must he see when he looks at you? 

You feel sick.

You can see the exact moment he sees you because he frowns and cocks his head to the side. He says nothing as Molly’s fusses, eyes fixed on you with his lips barely parted, head half-turned to the side like it wants to tear away but can’t seem to force itself.

You’ve been sat by the fire too long; your face burns from it. Why they’ve lit a fire in mid-june is beyond you. 

“Now,” Molly says, waving you over, “Arthur’s set everything up for you, dear, though I’ve got to warn you, it’s no luxury hotel. That room’s barely been touched since there were farmers here, and that’s about fifty years ago, now…”

When did Arthur come back in?

“And Gideon told you about the plumbing, and the-”

“Yes,” you interject, heart beating in your throat, now, “Yes, thank you. Really, Molly, thank you so much. For everything.”

She carries on, turning to Remus. You feel lightheaded; so lightheaded, and it’s been such a long day and you’re exhausted, and she’s asked you something now, she’s actually asked you something and you can see her lips moving but you can’t hear a thing. 

“Sorry,” you say suddenly. “I’m just- I’m very tired. Could I maybe…?”

Is your voice really loud?

“Of course, dear,” Molly says, prying Arthur’s cup out of his hands. “You must be exhausted, all that travel. Here, Remus’ll walk you down, he’s staying in the other room. It’s no more than fifteen, twenty minutes down the road - will you manage?”

“Yes, I-,” you say, “that’s fine.”

“You’re more than welcome to stay here for the night if you like,” Arthur offers, insistently. “I wouldn’t want you walking down to that old shack at this hour of the night, why don’t-”

“She’s a grown woman, dear,” Molly fusses, reaching over to take Remus’ cup. 

When’d she find time to give him that?

They shoo the boys out and suddenly, in a heartbeat, the room is almost completely empty. 

Time slows way down, with a force that leaves your stomach surging like you’re on a plane taking a dive. This is the split second where Remus’ nonchalant facade breaks, when he first gets a good, up-close look at your face. Where he gets this look, this far-out and distanced look in his eyes, but you can’t make out what it is. And then it flashes before your eyes, dark and pained and sharp and twisted and it’s like you’ve both tapped into the same frequency for the millisecond it takes for the memory to flicker in front of your mind’s eye. 

Can he see the way your eyes gloss over?

“Remus, dear,” Molly’s voice tuts from behind him, “Would you mind? You’re just in the way, love.”

He doesn’t answer, eyes - not wide in surprise like yours, but narrowed; narrowed, unblinking, and concentrated. It fills your stomach with dread. Anything neutral in his surprise has melted away now that he’s had a moment to think and recollect. His forearms flex as he shifts the plastic bag in his hands to readjust the weight, head almost entirely cocked to the side as he stares at you, brows furrowed in something nearing anger and lips parted ever so slightly, like he might want to think about saying something but can’t quite decide what to say.

Surely they must have told him you’d be here?

“Remus?”

He almost jumps then, blinking and tearing his gaze away from you.

“‘course, Molly.”

His voice echoes in the room after he turns to let her through.

“Here,” Molly says, pulling the bag from your hands before you have a chance to hold on, “Remus’ll take that.”

Remus lets out what you can only describe as an affirmative grunt, just about polite enough for it not to be rude in front of Molly, grabbing your duffel by the strap and swinging it onto his shoulder. He’s gone out the door before you can say another word. 

You press a forced smile onto your lips and move to follow.

“What time will you be back tomorrow, dear?”

Molly’s unassuming tone chips away at you for reasons you can’t explain. 

“Not too late, Molly,” you mumble, tearing your eyes away from his back, flashing her what you hope looks like a tired but genuine smile and heading for the door, “Not too late.”

The old farmhouse down the lane from the Burrow is surrounded by overgrown weeds and old rubber tires. Some of the tires are as wide as you are tall, stacked on top of each other with tufts of green and yellow poking through the gaps in the threads.

The walk itself is less than quiet. He stalks in front of you, never closer than about six feet. Doesn’t even look back to check if you’re in tow. Though to be fair, besides actively diving into the brambles and brush that outline the lane, there’s not really anywhere you could go.

Bare wooden planks cover the floors, worn down from decades of use. There’s a simple, wood-burning stove in the corner of the front room, surrounded by stone walls. There are two doors on the back wall, one on the right, and one on the left. Two doors, two bedrooms. 

Two tenants , you remind yourself. 

This is where you live, now. On Gideon’s request, Molly and Arthur have been generous enough to let you stay here free of charge. It’s hard to pay rent when you can’t work. No one’s supposed to know you’re here, either, outside the Prewett-Weasleys.

And Remus Lupin, apparently. 

What the fuck is he doing here? You’ve not heard a word from or about him in years, literal years, and up he pops, like a jack-in-the-box. It’s knocked you for six; you drag your bag across the wooden floor into the room he didn’t stalk into and and sit down on the mattress, and then you just… sit there, staring out into the darkness until your eyes grow used to it and you can begin to see the outline of the handles on the dresser drawers on the opposite side of the room. 

Don’t even know how long it takes you to move, strip, and shuffle under the covers, but by the time you do, your joints are stiff and sore and the first signs of daybreak have begun to push through the thinly woven fabric of the curtains.

Remus must be long gone by the time you wake. It’s unsurprising; judging by how bright the sun is, you’re guessing you’ve slept in. You have a vague memory of almost waking a few hours ago and hearing the sound of rushing water outside. Gideon had mentioned that there wasn’t any indoor plumbing, but the way your nightclothes stick to your skin makes the thought of dousing yourself in a bucket of cold water outside a heavenly fantasy come to life. 

There’s no way to get lost on your way back to the Burrow; the farmhouse is at the end of a dead end, so your feet move on auto pilot. 

There’s shouting in the halls as you step through the open back door, echoing up the stairwells. Moving through the kitchen in shoes you probably should take off, you stick your head through the doorway and almost trip over the two tiny streaks of ginger that run into you as they head around the corner. They land on their bottoms and freeze to a halt with big, brown eyes that peer up at you and just look up, and up, and up until they reach your face. 

You tower over them, a ghastly vision with matted hair and sunken eyes, skin gaunt and discoloured. Moments tick by before you bend down to reach both hands out, one in the direction of either bairn. They blink.

You wiggle your fingers when the bairns don’t move, and something clicks behind their eyes as they heave themselves onto their feet and reach for your hands. Each twin grips two of your fingers tightly as you lead them down the hall, stooped low as they waddle along the tattered carpet in their nappies. You lead the boys through the doorway first, shuffling after them.

Molly stands behind an ironing board, one hand wrapped around a small bundle, the other resting on top of a nearby dresser. Her head darts up when she hears footsteps shuffling along the carpet. 

“Think these belong to you.”

The boys have taken a liking to you. You can’t imagine why. They cling onto your legs the minute you step into the open kitchen door and babble a thousand innocent questions in your direction without cessation.

It’s good. Idle hands make great feeding grounds for nervous breakdowns.

Molly’s got you peeling potatoes by the time Arthur and Remus get back. He’s working as a sort of farmhand, you’ve learned. Though the Weasleys aren’t really farmers, so you’re not sure how that works. But Arthur’s always fancied himself quite the handyman, so odds are he’s got things brewing. Plenty of farmers around these parts anyway, bound to be plenty of work to be done. 

The spuds rest in a net bag in front of you, a muddy brownish colour with green and yellow eyes poking through the gaps in the mesh. Molly’s upstairs trying to give the children a bath. Judging by the shrieks and howls echoing down the stairwell, it’s not going very well.

Molly’s left some record on, some woman warbling out of tune on a track that is ninety-five per cent harp. It’s got you dissociating, hands moving without thought, carving strips of potato skins onto a board in a steady rhythm. Tuber after tuber gets tossed into the pot. The ever-lasting scent of manure from the nearby fields doesn’t agree with your insides yet, and you can taste the bile on your tongue as the smell of starch and water from the skins hit your nose. 

Midsummer months bring heavy air, slick with sweetness and humidity and the type of heat that makes your clothes stick to every crevice and plane of you with sweat. You thought it was just you; just a summer’s day of physical labour in a house with terrible ventilation, but the air that hit your cheeks as you stuck your head out of a window in the stairwell was even warmer than the stale air inside. Right now, in the late evening when the fever breaks and a cool shade begins to descend over the fields, it feels like being let out of a car that’s been left in the sun for too long. Flesh on your cheeks, arms, and legs burning and swollen with warmth, you heave the back door open and inhale deeply through the nose, hand resting on the handle of the door to ground you. 

There’s that smell in the air that you only get in warm, humid places. It settles in your belly and calms your nausea. The bugs don’t even cross your mind. Bugs be damned. The setting sun is painting streaks of orange and pink over the cloudy skies. It feels like a dream, something not quite real, after months of being unable to feel your fingers and toes from piercing frost. For a moment, you feel like the sun could swallow you whole, pick you up and lift you and bring you in on yourself. You’re not sure how long you linger in the doorway; could be a minute, could be half an hour.

Your chores beckon, and you move to sit at the kitchen table. The soft strumming of the harp in the background seems less intrusive now; maybe it’s because the singer hasn’t sung a note in a minute. The pot begins to fill slowly, and your fingers begin to prune. A bead of sweat trickles down your temple but disappears before it can reach your cheek.

“Thought I might find you here.”

Shit. You suck in a sharp breath, droplets of crimson trickling down the crease of your thumb. You stick the throbbing digit in your mouth, wincing at the starch residue from the skins. 

From the corner of your eye, you see him pull a tissue out from a nearby box on the counter. You almost trip on your skirts as you lurch to your feet to grab the handles and heave the pot of potatoes onto the hob, threatening to slosh water all over the chipped tiles in your haste to avoid him trying to give it to you. But he lingers after you, coming up to lean against the counter beside you. 

He’s trying. Somewhere, deep down, you know he’s trying. The fact that he’s even talking to you is something, let alone the tissue hanging limply in his outstretched hand. But you can’t find it in you to pretend that you’re in the mood. Maybe you’re overtired. Maybe… maybe it’s something else. You yank the tissue out of his grasp unceremoniously, avoiding looking at his face and pressing it to your skin after rinsing it in the sink.

“So,” Remus says slowly, quietly feigning nonchalance as you wrap the tissue around your thumb, “what are you doing here, then?”

When he talks, it’s like he’s trying not to speak too loud. Everything sounds like it’s being murmured in your ear. You half expect to feel his breath on your neck. You remind yourself that he’s got some nerve talking to you in the first place. You purse your lips.

“What are you doing here?”

Something changes in Remus’ eyes, then. It’s like you’ve broken some sort of ice.

“If I’ve done something to offend you,” he begins, eyeing you with calculated caution. Like he’s testing the waters. “Or said something…”

“Then I’ll know you haven’t changed,” you supply. 

You can feel his eyes on you as you turn to the kitchen table and he moves, but he doesn’t follow you, instead lingering in the open space of the kitchen floor. He watches as you scrape peelings into the half-full bucket near the stove and grab its handle, almost yanking it off with the force of it. He makes a point of dipping his head slightly and cocking it to the side as you dry your hands aggressively with a fraying kitchen towel so as to better look you straight in the eye. He keeps his eyes on you unapologetically as you pass him, pushing through to the back door to make your way to the garden. 

You can’t tell if he follows you out. You don’t want to turn around to look. You stalk towards the compost heap on the far side of the field, a shabby thing held up by rotting planks of wood, poorly nailed together. Must be Arthur’s handiwork. Everything he lays his hands on begins to tear at the seams as soon as he’s done. He’s got a copy of some DIY manual from 1958 proudly displayed in the sitting room; its spine has almost fully disintegrated and the letters on the front have faded from years opposite a south-facing window, but it remains surrounded by trinkets and charms like a holy book on the mantelpiece. 

Gnats buzz around your ears. You slop the contents of the bucket onto the growing heap and turn, all too quickly, and nearly jump out of your skin when you see him directly in front of you. The bucket clatters dully against the grass as only plastic can, hitting the ground with the edge of its curved lip and bouncing off behind him. 

“Heard you’re living here, now. Permanently”

“Hearing all sorts of things, you are,” you mutter, almost out of breath as you push past him again and stoop to retrieve the bucket. 

He beats you to it, snatching it just out of your reach.

“Something about you needing to get away from something?”

“What do you care.”

Swipe. Miss. 

“Of course I care,” he drawls, walking backwards with quick, hurried steps to stay ahead of you as you move to lunge for the bucket. “What, your folks finally given up on ya?”

“Well you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

It’s a nasty thing to say. It’s really nasty. So nasty it makes you feel repulsed that you could even formulate such a thought, let alone choose to say it out loud. Because he was at least partly joking, and there’s no way you can spin it so you don’t look like a horrible, horrible person. His feet stumble as his expression falls, face becoming slack. And in that moment he looks every bit the beautiful, tormented twenty-five year old he is. Golden, freckled skin glows in the setting sun; bright green eyes pained and beaten.

Then he pulls himself together. 

“See you haven’t changed either.”

That’s a bit uncalled for. You’ve never had a go at him because of his parents before, and you don’t appreciate the insinuation. It causes you physical pain that he clocked you on the first try, though. It annoys you. Why is he pretending he knows anything about you? Your skin begins to burn again, and your eyes threaten to puff up like you’ve been stung. 

You snatch the bucket out of his hands and stalk back to the main house. 

He doesn’t follow you back in.

It’s overcast today, for the first time in well over a week, but that doesn’t stop the heat rising from the earth like steam trapped in a saucepan, clouds forming a heavy lid over the dome of your existence. You can feel your heartbeat in your ears, your heavy pants the only sound in an otherwise windless expanse. A bead of sweat trickles down your temple, rubbed away by a brisk forearm that you can barely bear to lift. All the clothes you have, bar what you had on your back the day you arrived, are hand-me-downs that Molly’s been generous enough to offer you. It’s almost exclusively skirts; long and flowy with patterns in browns, greens, and oranges that match her hair. Long skirts that she was going to give away anyway, so you don’t have to worry about getting grass stains or dirty marks on them. Your thighs have begun to chafe and as much as you’re enjoying the pain now, like some sort of sweet release and a reminder that you’re alive, you’re afraid of how you’re gonna feel after. Because right now, beneath the bright grey sky and fields that span on as far as the eye can see, it’s hard to picture an ‘after’. 

But the after finally comes, and it comes in the form of two dark dots moving above the stone walls in the distance. They’re by a tree stump near the outskirts of the field when you reach the wall. You can see what they’ve been clearing, now; someone’s been fly-tipping. There’s a path leading into some bushes near the biggest heap of junk; the road they drove up on must be just out the other side. 

Arthur smiles brightly when he sees you, giving you an animated wave despite the ruddy cheeks that indicate his fatigue. 

“Excellent timing, my dear. Come!”

Remus is too far away for you to see the look on his face, and maybe you don’t want to look. But you’re happy to take a breather as they make their way towards you, your mouth dry and your breathing almost hoarse. You’ve barely had cause to see him since the bucket incident a few days ago. 

Arthur reaches you first, gesturing to the stone wall that separates you. 

“It’s a bit of a tall one, I’m afraid, and there’s no way round unless you walk all the way up to the car, but Remus’ll help you over in a jiffy. Won’t you, lad?”

Remus grumbles something unintelligible in response.

“Here, I’ll take that…”

Free of the tupperware, you’ve a hand free to shift your skirt. The seam’s twisted round to your front, and the label that’s supposed to be at the back is now digging itchily into the flesh of your hip. You smooth the fabric down, ignoring how prickly and oddly numb your fingertips feel.

“Well, come on, then.”

You blink stupidly. You’d forgotten about the logistics of getting over. Admittedly, climbing a wall might be the thing that finally tips your fatigue over the edge. 

“What… What do you want me to-”

“Oh, for fuck-”

He presses his palms against the top of the wall and pushes himself up over it with ease, landing beside you in a second. You turn to face him, but next thing you know his hands are pressing into your waist and he’s hoisted you up in the air like some rag doll, seating you atop the uneven stones. The straps of the cooler bag dig into your palms as you clumsily swing your legs over the other side and you concentrate on the burn for the second it takes him to jump back over. He doesn’t need to help you down, it’s just a simple drop, but his hand makes its way to the small of your back like it’s on instinct. 

You stand so close together when your feet touch the ground that you can smell the sweat and humidity off him, but it’s a grounding smell. He catches you when you wobble, just for a brief second. That’s when he realises where his hand is, and he pulls back sharply. 

“I trust Her Highness can make her own way over,” he mutters, stalking away before you can say another word.

Gnats buzz at your ear and you bring your wrist up to rub them away as you watch him. When you finally catch up, you set the tupperware on the stump, handing Arthur the Horlicks flask and dropping the cooler bag on the ground. 

“Ooh,” Arthur says, smiling widely and hurrying to unscrew the cap. He draws a deep sniff through his nose and sighs blissfully. "A cup for you, my boy?”

Remus looks less than impressed. 

“Have you got nowt else for us?”

He doesn’t even look up at you when he says it, just turns his attention back to the cloth in his hands and the dirt he’s trying to rub off them. Well then.

“There’s water or Ribena,” you say blandly, nudging the cooler bag over to him with your foot. “That’s your lot.”

You don’t see if he reacts, turning your back on him and prying open the lid. 

Then, from over your shoulder and with disinterest;

“Ta.”

You watch Arthur as he leans back in his foldable lawn chair. Should you sit down? Are you supposed to? Your endeavours have caught up with you and you’re exhausted, blinking sluggishly. 

“What time is it?” you wonder, distracted by a small bird flailing above a tree just down the way. 

“What do I look like, a bloody sundial?”

You’re half surprised he heard you as you weren’t sure you actually said it out loud. If you had the energy to care, you would. Instead, you sit down on the grass beside Arthur’s chair and tuck your knees to your side. 

“Must be awful for the Lovegoods to have people fly-tipping on their lot,” you say, in an effort to make conversation. 

“Oh, no, dear,” Arthur replies animatedly in-between bites, “this is all theirs. They like to collect things, the Lovegoods. They’ve just run out of places to put things.”

‘A bin’ is the first place that comes to mind when you spot the tattered mattress and the curled wires of an old radiator, but knowing the state of Arthur’s shed, you don’t dare say it out loud. But as your eyes accidentally land on Remus, you know you’re not the only one. 

You didn’t mean to look at him.

The odd chew and swallow are the only things to be heard for the next while. You sit twisting blades of grass and pulling them up, plaiting them together in a makeshift braid that falls apart when you try to knot it. The blades are too dry; they split and break and fray.

You almost lose track of the light as you stumble down the slopes again, veering into tree trunks and tripping over roots and dips and holes. Arthur had asked if you wanted to stay and catch a lift back with them in the truck, but then Remus said something snarky - you can’t remember what - and you figured you’d be better off just heading off yourself. Your eyes glaze over as you find relief in the dusk, head pounding at a steady rhythm matched by your footsteps and ticking away the time it takes you to make it down. 

By the time you’ve stumbled over the doorstep to the kitchen, Molly’s gripped your arm and shoved the back of her hand against your forehead. Seconds later, you’re lying face down on a mattress in a cool, dark room. Just as your eyes begin to black out, you feel your gut squeeze around itself. 

Did you eat today?

Straight out the gate, your head’s ringing like a bitch. 

There’s a bee, or a wasp, or something, caught between the curtain and the window pane, buzzing loudly. You don’t know how it got there; you don’t crack the window at night, specifically to keep the bugs out, but judging by the foul taste in your mouth, the sweat on your brow, and the way your eyes screw shut at the slightest glimpse of sunlight bouncing off the wooden walls in your room, you might have to think of something else. 

You feel nauseous as you shift towards the end of the bed, clutching the bedsheet feebly to your chest. Your hands feel kinda numb. It takes you a few tries to get the window lock open; your hands keep slipping off the small, metal latch. You don’t realise how hot it is until the first trickle of cool breeze seeps in through the crack. Under your arms, your breasts, your knees, you’re slick with sweat, head throbbing heavily. 

Unsurprisingly, Remus is nowhere to be seen when you finally tiptoe out of your room. The grooves of the wooden floor are cool and uneven against the soles of your feet as you make your way outside. The front door creaks something awful when you undo the lock and push it open. Rough fibres of cloth and bristles scrub away at your skin and under your nails. The water’s delightfully cold when you finally bring the basin over your head and wash away the soap and grime.

There’s no sign of him at the big house, either. That’s three days he’s been away now. Haven’t seen him since you caught a glimpse of him over your shoulder, shunting an old mattress onto the back of Arthur’s truck as you set off down the sloping fields again. Something in your brain tugs at the memory of the way the sunlight glinted off his bare arms. 

You look around the ground floor; Molly and Arthur have taken the kids up to Molly’s cousin’s for a few days for a family reunion. You barely remembered anything the morning after you passed out, waking up in a dark, musty room in the top landing from Molly tugging gently at your arm, filling you in on the impromptu plans and informing you that there was a casserole for you and Remus left on the stove for later. You half-thought you’d dreamt it when you woke up again hours later, only fitting the puzzle pieces together when you realised you’d been conscious for five minutes without hearing a single raised voice. It’s strange to see the place so empty, but the opportunity to give it a good airing out without screaming children and clutter flying all over the place is too good an opportunity to miss.

You’ve really been working this place the past three days; clutter is almost completely gone, all you have left is the floors and carpets, maybe some curtains, and opening every window in this building to breathe new life into it. Your hands are raw from soaps and detergents, pins and needles prick at your arms and legs. You take it easy, moving down the hall with careful and intentional steps. Your clothes smell of sweat and they’re stiff with grime, and you realise they’re the ones you wore yesterday. You don’t think of much while you eat. Not much comes to mind, really, other than how tired you feel and your desperate need to do some laundry. 

You set the swollen laundry basket down next to the washer. You don’t know how the day’s gone by so fast. There is not a speck of dust left in the place. Turns out it’s a lot easier to do a deep clean when you don’t have seven children running around the place every hour of every day. Maybe that’d be the way to do it, you think as you shove clothes into the machine. Make it a regular thing. Now that you’re helping out, it seems like a missed opportunity. 

You shrug out of your clothes, peeling your bra and underwear off and tossing them into the now almost-full machine. Rhythmic humming vibrates through the floorboards as you make your way to the airing cupboard for a towel. Lukewarm water soothes your skin, fingertips easing the headache you’ve been staving off all day as you lather and rinse. You get distracted as you dry yourself off, pressing softly at the skin on your cheeks and under your eyes to bring some feeling back in your face. You stare at the mirror for a while. The washer’s done by the time you make it back downstairs; your underwear and bra are almost dry from the spin cycle so you pull them on, ditch the towel, and pull the rest of the clothes into the basin. 

The sun is on the last of its maximum effort when you push open the kitchen door and make your way to the clothes line. There’s no one around; other than Molly and Arthur’s lot, you haven’t seen another soul since you arrived. Today’s been an absolute sweltering mess; staying indoors has meant you’ve had at least some semblance of shade, and you can’t imagine many others are braving the scorching temperatures to leg it all the way into the middle of nowhere to drop by in the middle of the work week. 

You hang the clothes on the line as the sun slowly begins to set, relishing in the cool relief of fresh air on your skin that’s still slightly warm with sunburn. You rest a hand on the back of a plastic garden chair as you watch the colours flit across the sky, and in this moment you feel like you could just stay here, right here, forever. The deep breath you take in through your nose is sweet and full, calming your beating heart as you gently exhale. It’s just you, the sun, and the birds flying in a pattern only they know over the tops of the trees in the distance. You watch as the tip of the tail of the last bird disappears over the horizon. 

“Some view to come home to, that.”

Shit. 

You forgot about him.

Your neck almost cracks as you whip around. He’s leaning against the corner of the house - he must have come from the town road - arms crossed with narrowed, unkind eyes. It’s glaringly obvious that he’s not talking about the birds, nor is he talking about the sunset that’s nearing its end behind you. 

You grab the nearest thing you see, ripping it off the line and bolting for the kitchen. The plastic pegs scatter among the tufts of grass, a rogue sock slipping off the line in the scuffle. He pushes himself off the wall in less than a heartbeat and sprints, beating you to the door by a second and reaching to lean against the doorframe just as you try to push through. He doesn’t budge. You tug the dress over your head, hair tousled and eyes looking anywhere but him as you ignore the bits of gravel that dig into the soles of your feet. You try to push through again, a bit more sophisticated now in your damp decency, but he still does not budge. 

You feel his gaze on your face. It burns. All of it. Your skin, your hair, your nails, your eyeballs, it all burns. You’ve half a mind to grab the bristled brush from the farmhouse and start scrubbing until you see red. Your skin itches with it. You can’t even say he’s looking at you cheekily, not even with a semblance of lust. It’s sheer arrogance, eyes sparkling with the delight of having put you in a position of distress. Like it’s a treat for him to make you feel this way. 

“Let me though,” you mutter, eyes locked on the kitchen beyond his outstretched arm. 

“Oh, now-”

“I’m serious, let-”

“Why the rush? I mean, you’ve been fine out here for so long,” he says, feigning concern. The hubris in his voice makes you feel physically ill. So, he’s been watching you for a while, then. The greater the effort, the greater the reward, it would seem. 

“Tea’s not gonna put itself on,” you insist, gripping his forearm weakly and attempting to pull it off the frame. Any relief you felt on your skin is long gone, the burning, sweltering sensation has returned tenfold.

After a minute or two he indulges you, standing up so you can just about squeeze past. 

“Wouldn’t want to go hungry, would we?”

You ignore him as you pull a saucepan out from under the counter and accidentally slam it onto the stovetop. You try not to think of him standing there, watching your every movement. The day that had seemed so liberating suddenly seems so far away. A thought strikes you as you grab the container out of the fridge, has he been on the drink? 

You scoop spoonfuls of casserole into the saucepan. More than half of it remains in the container once you’re done; Molly had calculated portions for the both of you, but he hasn’t been in at all. 

Your hands move on autopilot, twisting unsuccessfully at the lid of the jar of radishes Molly insisted you finish before they got home. 

"Come on," you mutter under your breath, slamming the lip of the jar on the edge of the wooden table. 

"Well, Jesus, don't whack it like that,” Remus huffs, snatching it from your grip. You hadn’t even noticed him cross the room. He pops the lid off and hands it back to you wordlessly, taking a seat at the table and pulling a paperback from his jacket pocket. 

He reads while he eats. He’s half done before you even pick up your fork. You push your food around your plate, the day’s heat putting a permanent damper on most of your appetite, humiliation taking care of the rest. There’s a low hum in the air.

“You make this?”

It’s so monotonous you’re not even sure he said anything. 

“Hm?”

He swallows, eyes not lifting from the yellowed pages. 

“D’you make this?”

You stare at him for a second. Your shoulders tense; undoubtedly he’s found something to criticise you for.

“Why?”

He frowns, then looks up. Then he shrugs.

“It’s nice.”

You blink. 

“Oh.”

You stare at each other for a minute, before he raises his eyebrows as if to say “well?”

“No,” you say slowly. “No. Uh, Molly did.”

He grunts in response. 

You watch as he takes both his plate and your own and heads over to the sink. Plates washed, he dries his hands with the towel slung over one of the chairs and picks up his book. Your eyes don’t leave him for a second as he takes a seat on the step leading out to the garden. He stretches his legs out, back leaning against the doorframe and the book settled snugly between his fingers, resting in his palm. 

A strange feeling comes over you as you sit and watch him. It’s a sensitive thing, a body’s  memory. Sitting in this kitchen, staring out as the final remnants of a sunset paint the sky, you feel tugs at the end of your mind. Flashes of young children running about the house, barefoot with dirty soles from playing in the grass all day. Plastic cups with faded floral patterns on them, resting on the kitchen table, filled with water turned lukewarm in the heat. And a small, slender, freckled boy with green eyes and dark blond hair, hands outstretched to pull you with him. Eyes wide and eager to show you the ropes, the feeling of bark underneath your palms and scrapes that bleed and burn on your knees. 

You see the boy again, but he’s taller now, more confident. He’s starting to grow into his features now. He avoids looking at you when he can, clammy hands no longer outstretched, no longer eager to pull you with him. Content to leave you behind. The sun still beats down on the grass, its yellowing tips crunching slightly under your toes. 

You see him again, older and broader, but this is where your tolerance ends. You cannot, will not reminisce. You tear your eyes away from him and wipe your palms on your dress. 

But it’s too late. There’s a sharp pain in your stomach, and you’ve wandered into dangerous territory. However you knew him before, however he knew you, it’s gone. Gone are the eyes that used to steal quick glances when they thought no one noticed. Gone are the slight and innocent touches, gone is the feeling of warmth, the feeling of mattering, the feeling of hope. Gone is the boy who made you feel like you meant something to him. 

Your heart aches. Then you pull yourself up. You may not know him now, but you knew him then. And surely that must count for something.

The breeze that sweeps across your skin as you step over the ledge and take a seat on the step is cool and fresh. You stretch your legs out, crossing at the ankles, and lean against the other side of the doorframe. The ache of the day’s physical efforts starts to sink in, and you let your eyelids slowly fall shut.

You hear the light brushes as he turns each page. Once the last light starts to disappear from behind your eyelids, you slowly open them again, turning your head slightly so your eyes land on him. His features are poorly lit, his outline glowing from the golden reach of the kitchen light. A slight frown makes itself known as his eyes skim over the page.

“What?” he says quietly, looking over in your direction but not meeting your eyeline. 

You didn’t think he’d noticed. You stifle a grunt as you push yourself off the corroded stone step, small, sharp bits of gravel sticking into your palms. 

“Just thought you might want some company,” you mutter. 

Without looking his way, you start walking and don’t stop until you reach the farm house.

Molly says you can move in permanently if you want. That they’d be happy to have you, but they just don’t know what you’d want with a derelict, old farmhouse. She doesn’t mean it. You can’t imagine she means it. She’s just being polite. But it’s sparked a train of thought in you, a train of thought that for the first time ever imagines a reality in which you have a life; a job, family, maybe even friends if you play your cards right. A reality where you have other people around you, who actually want to be around you and find you interesting, and funny, and smart.   

You find yourself imagining pieces of furniture in the front room, lighting fires in the stove and the smells of stews and pies and fresh air and green grass. Maybe a dog, or a goat, or something. Maybe a cat. You could get to town from here; Molly and Arthur would definitely let you catch a lift in the mornings, and you could walk to theirs from here no problem. Maybe you could get a bike. You’d need one to get in and out of town, to do your shopping. You could put a basket on the front, or have Arthur fasten a wooden crate to it. He’d definitely want to. Maybe you could even get your own licence; a proper one, and a car to go with it. You could get a kitchen put in. An indoor bathroom. Slowly but surely, piece by piece, plank by plank, the whole place could come together. 

The kids could come by. It’d be like having neighbours. They would be neighbours, and you could watch them when Molly and Arthur were busy. You could teach them how to plant vegetables and flowers. You could learn how to plant vegetables and flowers. Carve out a little spot for an allotment. There’s enough field to go round, and you’ve got the woodlands right down the road. 

Then the slam of the front door shutting behind you echoes in the empty space, and your head gets real quiet. 

Jesus Christ.

A loud thud sends you reeling, gasping sharply for air as you jerk out of your tumultuous sleep and roll unceremoniously off the edge of your bed. It doesn’t even hurt properly, not sharply, just a dull ache that rings in your joints as soon as you manage to heave yourself onto your feet again. 

It’s still dark out; the deep shadow against the curtain tells you as much. Squinting, you edge towards the door. But there’s a groan; a loud, pained groan that sounds so vulnerable that you can’t help but be curious.

His head doesn’t even lift to look at you.

“You look…”

Awful.

He’s had the shit kicked out of him. You can barely see him in the dim light, but you can see the way he cradles one arm with the other, like he’s pulled something. He stumbles over obstacles that aren’t even there, careening into the wall with another crash that prompts you into movement. 

“Yeah, I…”

Then he tips forward dangerously; your arm shoots out to grab him, but he catches himself before you make contact. The world around you moves in slow motion; you don’t know how long it takes for your eyes to focus back on him. Knuckles whitening, he grips the doorframe and hauls himself up again. 

You could just leave him. He hung around for a few days after the Weasleys got back, after which he disappeared again. You haven’t seen or heard him since. Molly and Arthur don’t seem too phased by his coming and going. “You know what young men are like. As long as he gets his work done, there’s no harm done.”

Wordlessly, you prop him against your shoulder, wrapping an arm around his waist as you all but drag him into his room, stumbling under his weight. He slumps over the moment he hits the edge of the mattress, head dropping to the sheets. You sink to your knees beside him on the floor, rubbing your eyes with the heels of your palms and willing away the drowsiness that dances along the outskirts of your line of vision. 

You’re still half asleep and it’s weird. His room is weird. It smells weird. Like him. There’s two of him now. With the sleep meds you’re on, you’re surprised you’re upright at all. If you’re his best shot, he’s fucked.

“We should wake someone,” you murmur hazily, shifting to push yourself upwards. 

“No, no,” he slurs, hand clamping down on your shoulder with surprising force.

“Remus, I’m-”

“I know,” he sighs, one eye opening to look at you, “I can see it in your eyes, Y/N.” Then, a lazy smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth as he leans in so close his nose almost bumps against yours. “You’re pretty when you’re doped.”

He’s too fucked for it to be even remotely attractive. Even in your drowsy state, you’re wrinkling your nose and repressing a grimace. 

“What’s hap-”

He hushes you loudly. 

“So loud.”

A warm hand comes up sluggishly to rest on your head. You can barely feel the way his thumb only just manages to stroke your hair, but the movement lulls you into a trance, time slowing to a still.

“Wha…” you frown, “why is your hand wet?”

Your hand slips up to grab his wrist, but he pulls away.

“S’not,” he mumbles, barely audible over the sound of him wiping his palm on his shirt.

“It’s in my hair,” you sigh, slipping your own fingers through the strands. “Oh, please, just, tell me it’s not something disgusting.” 

His eyes widen almost comically.

“Christ, no, s’only my nosebleed,” he exclaims, trying to sit up. He’s too woozy, doubles over, knocking your forehead painfully with his own and almost knocking you out with the force of it.

“Ow,” you mutter, rubbing your forehead with the heel of your palm. 

“Some prick…” he grumbles, clutching his head. “I think he might’ve broken it n’ all.”

“Well don’t touch it,” you say, reaching up to grab his finger before he has a chance to prod at the bridge of his nose. Then, softer, this time; “Do you really think it’s broken?”

Remus shakes his head, sighing heavily and leaning back to rest his head against the pillow. 

“Nah.”

“You sure? You should get it checked-”

He shushes you loudly, hand flinging out at random to swat at yours. 

“Go to bed.”

“Too tired,” you sigh, putting your head in your hands. 

“Jus’ lie down here, then,” he mumbles, eyes closed, the edges of his words softened with sleep as his hand comes up to rest firmly against the back and side of your head. He pulls you towards him, head landing awkwardly against his chest. It’s really uncomfortable, but you’re too tired to care. You can’t even formulate a final thought before sleep puts you under again.

It’s his snores that wake you up. It’s unsurprising; you hear him every now and again through the wall, but this is more aggressive. Must be the nosebleed. 

You get up, back stiff from a night of twisted sleep, rubbing your eyes and sneaking a glimpse out beyond the curtain. Your eyes dart to the body in the bed, all but dead to the world.

“Fuck…” you mutter under your breath, running a hand through your hair. Then you frown, fingers coming away with clumps of dark red. The mirror on the wall is cracked, but you can clearly see your hair matted with what you remember to be blood, though it takes you a minute to remember how it got there.

You wash and head up to the house. You’ve errands to run with Molly. When you come back, he’s gone. 

You spot him later that same afternoon, carrying beams on his shoulder from the barn to the truck with Arthur. He looks worse for wear, you can see that from here. Got a black eye, by the looks of it. He’s supporting the beams with his right arm, wrapping it around the planks as they balance on his right shoulder. 

Isn’t he left-handed?

The sounds of feet hitting gravel are the only noise to be heard except for the odd grunt coming from the barn approaching on your right.

“-and that shoulder’ll be back to normal in no time, my boy,” Arthur remarks, heaving a sack into the back of the truck. He greets you cheerily as you pass, asking about your day. You remind him dinner’ll be in an hour. You glance to his left, discreetly as you can. If Remus notices you’re there, he doesn’t show it.

“Come on, I’ll treat you!”

Arthur beams up at you, well-intentional as ever. It’s busy in town, even for a Saturday evening. 

“I don’t, uh…” You pause, trying to think of a viable excuse.

“Come on.”

He opens the door to the pub and holds it open wide, indicating for you to go inside. There’s no way out, you suppose. As exhausted as you are from a full day of running errands, you’re in no position to turn him down. Molly’s got dinner planned in about two hours, so you won’t be here long. You brace yourself for the sensory overload and step towards him.

Something Molly said in passing a few days ago comes to mind as you push towards the bar. “Oh, they’re rowdy, those boys are. Harmless,” she’d nodded, “but rowdy.”

Not that harmless, you think. What’d Remus told her, then? Fell into a ditch, or something. That’ll be it; he fell into a ditch on the walk home from town. Or even better: climbed over a wall for a short cut and fell, landing right on his shoulder. Crunch. 

You don’t get a black eye from falling off a wall, though. Either Molly is a different level of gullible, or she’s ignoring it on purpose. He is a grown man, after all. Maybe you’re the only one acting like she’s your parent.

Arthur leans in, “They do a brilliant pie and mash. You hungry?”

“Oh,” you say, avoiding his gaze and ignoring the way your palms threaten to sweat, “Uh… Isn’t Molly cooking?”

“Hungry for a snack, me,” he grins. “Pork scratchings?”

You shake your head on impulse. 

“Packet of crisps? Cheese and onion? Salt and vinegar?”

Head shake. Head shake. Head shake. 

“Something to drink? Pint? Glass of wine? Water?”

“Water,” you interject before he can continue. “Glass of water, please.”

“Right you are,” he smiles, turning to the bar expectantly and tapping his fingertips against the surface as he waits with wide eyes. You shift your weight from one foot to the other as you stand awkwardly behind him. Are you hovering? You feel like you’re hovering. Your imposter syndrome is having a field day. 

“Busy today,” Arthur remarks, pulling a face and looking around. “Why don’t you go find us somewhere to sit down, dear?”

You nod before you know what you’re doing. You look around a bit too quickly, not actually seeing what it is you’re looking for. The back of your neck starts burning, so you panic and beeline in a random direction. There’s people everywhere today; you see a table in the corner, a small one with two mismatched chairs, one of wood and one of a tattered, green velvet- 

And that’s when you see him. Two tables away, with a group of three other lads and a couple of girls. The redhead is making him laugh. 

A lot. 

He’s pretty when he laughs. It’s a lot nicer than the scowl that seems permanently etched into his features up at the house. Here, he seems young; happy, even, grinning into his pint and ducking away from one of his friends as he swats at him. You can barely see the bruising on his face, now. In this light, he looks just like his old self. 

You stand there for a split second, preparing to back away any second now, but it’s long enough for you to catch his eye. Any trace of the smirk on his face dies immediately. It makes you feel sick. He looks away quickly and nods at the redhead, bringing his pint up to his lips. 

You might vomit.

It’s just the travel. Travel, and inhaling shit air, and eating shit food, and being all cramped up. You’re not even sure you ate. Hard to tell when each day bleeds into the next and time goes by a million miles an hour and not at all. 

Small feet and hands dig into the flesh of your thighs and stomach. The twins settle either side of your waist, gurgling and babbling to themselves. You sit in silence, staring at a patch of carpet, restless nails picking at frayed threads on the tattered armrest. Someone enters the room, voices speak, but it all sounds muffled. It isn’t until Molly pushes a saucer of biscuits under your nose that you come to, blinking heavily and mumbling disjointedly.

“Thank you.”

Molly glances at the clock on the wall. It’s got nine hands, one for Molly, one for Arthur, and one for each of the children. Does she keep a stack of them in a drawer somewhere, to add one on whenever a new one comes along?

“It’s getting late,” she mutters. 

Is it?

The thought that you might be keeping them up gnaws at you. You’re about to offer to retire for the evening, to apologise and head off, when Arthur stands. He hums, brows furrowed as though in deep thought, and shuffles into the hallway. As the air grows heavy with silence, your gaze rests back on Molly. 

“You know, I might just…”

The words die on your lips. They must have barely been audible, anyway, judging by Molly’s lack of reaction.

The odd child meanders into the room as you wait for Arthur to return. Bill’s at that age where you pretend you’re an adult, unsurprised and unscared. He barely spares you a second glance as he steps over to his mother, asking for the whereabouts of his book on Britain’s Most Dangerous Deepwater Sea-Creatures. 

Charlie’s not quite there yet, lingering in the hallway and peeking around the doorframe with wide eyes and a long, floppy, pink tongue. It’s the toy in his hands that catches your eye, a bright green dragon with blue spikes and huge eyes. He holds it around its neck so tight it might just pop off. 

You beckon him over. His eyes dart to his mother, then back to you, then back to his mother. Then he steels himself and tiptoes towards you.

“Y/N.”

He blinks. He looks like he’s going to chicken out and back away. 

You pull your hand away from the mouth of a teething George, wiping his saliva off on your sleeve and reaching behind your head. Lifting one of the many pendants from around your neck, you slip the chain onto your finger and hold it out to the seven year old in front of you.

“It’s yours, if you want it,” you say softly.

He eyes it timidly, looking up at you, then down at the pendant, then up at you, then back down at the pendant. The pendant’s a photo coin you bought at a museum gift shop when you were young; it’s got a celtic dragon pressed into its centre and waves decorating the rim.

“Take it,” you whisper. 

He smiles shyly, before snatching the chain with clumsy hands and shuffling away, not taking his eyes off of it for a second. The movement excites the twins, who squeal, and giggle, and squirm in your arms. One of them accidentally slaps you in the face. The other tries to shove their hand in your face, getting their hand stuck in your necklaces. 

“Come here,” you sigh, taking the soft, small, pudgy hand in yours to ease it out of the knot of chains. 

Four heavy knocks pound somewhere in the distance. 

The chains have gotten caught up in your hair, now. The child tugs, and you lurch, dangerously close to getting your fingers tangled up in the mess. 

A door slams in the distance. The bairn pulls his hand back, threatening to take a chunk of your scalp out with it. You grab hold of his hand again, murmuring for him to keep still, to relax, to stop pulling-

Then, from the doorway, with a kind lilt and a Yorkshire accent that makes your blood run cold as ice, comes a soft, deep voice, and surely you must be ill. Surely, you must have caught some fatal, delayed-onset disease, because the fever that burns at your skin, rippling in waves and numbing your wrists, is anything short of natural.

It hurts. It actually hurts. 

“Where’d you like ‘em, Molly?”

You might pass out. Jesus, you can hear your heartbeat squelching in your ears. You can vaguely hear Molly fussing about the time and we were beginning to think you weren’t coming back tonight and- 

Back? 

Soft, small hands slap at your wrists when they notice your attention has drifted. 

What does she mean, back? 

You’re still trying to untangle the knot in your hair, fingertips trying and failing to set you free. You can just about see the lower half of him where you sit, hunched over, with toddler spit trailing down your forearm and a fist in your hair. You can see the way his shirt sleeves have been rolled up to his elbows; see the sprigs of some kind of plant poking out from the handles of one of the plastic bags in his hands. 

He’s grown. Lived. Thrived, even, by the looks of things. 

It’s the smallest thing, but it fucks with your head. You haven’t grown, or lived, or thrived at all. You’re small. Ratty. Shrivelled, even, by the looks of things. 

As you finally detangle the child’s fingers from your hair, you get a proper look at him. He looks like he has friends. But not like he has to make any effort to keep them. Not even that; like it’s effortless for him to keep them. Like he’s got that kind of quiet magnetism. He looks like the type of guy someone else randomly brings to a night out and every friend of a friend tries to chat him up. Like he barely needs to say a word, but everyone still knows who he is and greets him when they see him.

What must he see when he looks at you? 

You feel sick.

You can see the exact moment he sees you because he frowns and cocks his head to the side. He says nothing as Molly’s fusses, eyes fixed on you with his lips barely parted, head half-turned to the side like it wants to tear away but can’t seem to force itself.

You’ve been sat by the fire too long; your face burns from it. Why they’ve lit a fire in mid-june is beyond you. 

“Now,” Molly says, waving you over, “Arthur’s set everything up for you, dear, though I’ve got to warn you, it’s no luxury hotel. That room’s barely been touched since there were farmers here, and that’s about fifty years ago, now…”

When did Arthur come back in?

“And Gideon told you about the plumbing, and the-”

“Yes,” you interject, heart beating in your throat, now, “Yes, thank you. Really, Molly, thank you so much. For everything.”

She carries on, turning to Remus. You feel lightheaded; so lightheaded, and it’s been such a long day and you’re exhausted, and she’s asked you something now, she’s actually asked you something and you can see her lips moving but you can’t hear a thing. 

“Sorry,” you say suddenly. “I’m just- I’m very tired. Could I maybe…?”

Is your voice really loud?

“Of course, dear,” Molly says, prying Arthur’s cup out of his hands. “You must be exhausted, all that travel. Here, Remus’ll walk you down, he’s staying in the other room. It’s no more than fifteen, twenty minutes down the road - will you manage?”

“Yes, I-,” you say, “that’s fine.”

“You’re more than welcome to stay here for the night if you like,” Arthur offers, insistently. “I wouldn’t want you walking down to that old shack at this hour of the night, why don’t-”

“She’s a grown woman, dear,” Molly fusses, reaching over to take Remus’ cup. 

When’d she find time to give him that?

They shoo the boys out and suddenly, in a heartbeat, the room is almost completely empty. 

Time slows way down, with a force that leaves your stomach surging like you’re on a plane taking a dive. This is the split second where Remus’ nonchalant facade breaks, when he first gets a good, up-close look at your face. Where he gets this look, this far-out and distanced look in his eyes, but you can’t make out what it is. And then it flashes before your eyes, dark and pained and sharp and twisted and it’s like you’ve both tapped into the same frequency for the millisecond it takes for the memory to flicker in front of your mind’s eye. 

Can he see the way your eyes gloss over?

“Remus, dear,” Molly’s voice tuts from behind him, “Would you mind? You’re just in the way, love.”

He doesn’t answer, eyes - not wide in surprise like yours, but narrowed; narrowed, unblinking, and concentrated. It fills your stomach with dread. Anything neutral in his surprise has melted away now that he’s had a moment to think and recollect. His forearms flex as he shifts the plastic bag in his hands to readjust the weight, head almost entirely cocked to the side as he stares at you, brows furrowed in something nearing anger and lips parted ever so slightly, like he might want to think about saying something but can’t quite decide what to say.

Surely they must have told him you’d be here?

“Remus?”

He almost jumps then, blinking and tearing his gaze away from you.

“‘course, Molly.”

His voice echoes in the room after he turns to let her through.

“Here,” Molly says, pulling the bag from your hands before you have a chance to hold on, “Remus’ll take that.”

Remus lets out what you can only describe as an affirmative grunt, just about polite enough for it not to be rude in front of Molly, grabbing your duffel by the strap and swinging it onto his shoulder. He’s gone out the door before you can say another word. 

You press a forced smile onto your lips and move to follow.

“What time will you be back tomorrow, dear?”

Molly’s unassuming tone chips away at you for reasons you can’t explain. 

“Not too late, Molly,” you mumble, tearing your eyes away from his back, flashing her what you hope looks like a tired but genuine smile and heading for the door, “Not too late.”

The old farmhouse down the lane from the Burrow is surrounded by overgrown weeds and old rubber tires. Some of the tires are as wide as you are tall, stacked on top of each other with tufts of green and yellow poking through the gaps in the threads.

The walk itself is less than quiet. He stalks in front of you, never closer than about six feet. Doesn’t even look back to check if you’re in tow. Though to be fair, besides actively diving into the brambles and brush that outline the lane, there’s not really anywhere you could go.

Bare wooden planks cover the floors, worn down from decades of use. There’s a simple, wood-burning stove in the corner of the front room, surrounded by stone walls. There are two doors on the back wall, one on the right, and one on the left. Two doors, two bedrooms. 

Two tenants , you remind yourself. 

This is where you live, now. On Gideon’s request, Molly and Arthur have been generous enough to let you stay here free of charge. It’s hard to pay rent when you can’t work. No one’s supposed to know you’re here, either, outside the Prewett-Weasleys.

And Remus Lupin, apparently. 

What the fuck is he doing here? You’ve not heard a word from or about him in years, literal years, and up he pops, like a jack-in-the-box. It’s knocked you for six; you drag your bag across the wooden floor into the room he didn’t stalk into and and sit down on the mattress, and then you just… sit there, staring out into the darkness until your eyes grow used to it and you can begin to see the outline of the handles on the dresser drawers on the opposite side of the room. 

Don’t even know how long it takes you to move, strip, and shuffle under the covers, but by the time you do, your joints are stiff and sore and the first signs of daybreak have begun to push through the thinly woven fabric of the curtains.

Remus must be long gone by the time you wake. It’s unsurprising; judging by how bright the sun is, you’re guessing you’ve slept in. You have a vague memory of almost waking a few hours ago and hearing the sound of rushing water outside. Gideon had mentioned that there wasn’t any indoor plumbing, but the way your nightclothes stick to your skin makes the thought of dousing yourself in a bucket of cold water outside a heavenly fantasy come to life. 

There’s no way to get lost on your way back to the Burrow; the farmhouse is at the end of a dead end, so your feet move on auto pilot. 

There’s shouting in the halls as you step through the open back door, echoing up the stairwells. Moving through the kitchen in shoes you probably should take off, you stick your head through the doorway and almost trip over the two tiny streaks of ginger that run into you as they head around the corner. They land on their bottoms and freeze to a halt with big, brown eyes that peer up at you and just look up, and up, and up until they reach your face. 

You tower over them, a ghastly vision with matted hair and sunken eyes, skin gaunt and discoloured. Moments tick by before you bend down to reach both hands out, one in the direction of either bairn. They blink.

You wiggle your fingers when the bairns don’t move, and something clicks behind their eyes as they heave themselves onto their feet and reach for your hands. Each twin grips two of your fingers tightly as you lead them down the hall, stooped low as they waddle along the tattered carpet in their nappies. You lead the boys through the doorway first, shuffling after them.

Molly stands behind an ironing board, one hand wrapped around a small bundle, the other resting on top of a nearby dresser. Her head darts up when she hears footsteps shuffling along the carpet. 

“Think these belong to you.”

The boys have taken a liking to you. You can’t imagine why. They cling onto your legs the minute you step into the open kitchen door and babble a thousand innocent questions in your direction without cessation.

It’s good. Idle hands make great feeding grounds for nervous breakdowns.

Molly’s got you peeling potatoes by the time Arthur and Remus get back. He’s working as a sort of farmhand, you’ve learned. Though the Weasleys aren’t really farmers, so you’re not sure how that works. But Arthur’s always fancied himself quite the handyman, so odds are he’s got things brewing. Plenty of farmers around these parts anyway, bound to be plenty of work to be done. 

The spuds rest in a net bag in front of you, a muddy brownish colour with green and yellow eyes poking through the gaps in the mesh. Molly’s upstairs trying to give the children a bath. Judging by the shrieks and howls echoing down the stairwell, it’s not going very well.

Molly’s left some record on, some woman warbling out of tune on a track that is ninety-five per cent harp. It’s got you dissociating, hands moving without thought, carving strips of potato skins onto a board in a steady rhythm. Tuber after tuber gets tossed into the pot. The ever-lasting scent of manure from the nearby fields doesn’t agree with your insides yet, and you can taste the bile on your tongue as the smell of starch and water from the skins hit your nose. 

Midsummer months bring heavy air, slick with sweetness and humidity and the type of heat that makes your clothes stick to every crevice and plane of you with sweat. You thought it was just you; just a summer’s day of physical labour in a house with terrible ventilation, but the air that hit your cheeks as you stuck your head out of a window in the stairwell was even warmer than the stale air inside. Right now, in the late evening when the fever breaks and a cool shade begins to descend over the fields, it feels like being let out of a car that’s been left in the sun for too long. Flesh on your cheeks, arms, and legs burning and swollen with warmth, you heave the back door open and inhale deeply through the nose, hand resting on the handle of the door to ground you. 

There’s that smell in the air that you only get in warm, humid places. It settles in your belly and calms your nausea. The bugs don’t even cross your mind. Bugs be damned. The setting sun is painting streaks of orange and pink over the cloudy skies. It feels like a dream, something not quite real, after months of being unable to feel your fingers and toes from piercing frost. For a moment, you feel like the sun could swallow you whole, pick you up and lift you and bring you in on yourself. You’re not sure how long you linger in the doorway; could be a minute, could be half an hour.

Your chores beckon, and you move to sit at the kitchen table. The soft strumming of the harp in the background seems less intrusive now; maybe it’s because the singer hasn’t sung a note in a minute. The pot begins to fill slowly, and your fingers begin to prune. A bead of sweat trickles down your temple but disappears before it can reach your cheek.

“Thought I might find you here.”

Shit. You suck in a sharp breath, droplets of crimson trickling down the crease of your thumb. You stick the throbbing digit in your mouth, wincing at the starch residue from the skins. 

From the corner of your eye, you see him pull a tissue out from a nearby box on the counter. You almost trip on your skirts as you lurch to your feet to grab the handles and heave the pot of potatoes onto the hob, threatening to slosh water all over the chipped tiles in your haste to avoid him trying to give it to you. But he lingers after you, coming up to lean against the counter beside you. 

He’s trying. Somewhere, deep down, you know he’s trying. The fact that he’s even talking to you is something, let alone the tissue hanging limply in his outstretched hand. But you can’t find it in you to pretend that you’re in the mood. Maybe you’re overtired. Maybe… maybe it’s something else. You yank the tissue out of his grasp unceremoniously, avoiding looking at his face and pressing it to your skin after rinsing it in the sink.

“So,” Remus says slowly, quietly feigning nonchalance as you wrap the tissue around your thumb, “what are you doing here, then?”

When he talks, it’s like he’s trying not to speak too loud. Everything sounds like it’s being murmured in your ear. You half expect to feel his breath on your neck. You remind yourself that he’s got some nerve talking to you in the first place. You purse your lips.

“What are you doing here?”

Something changes in Remus’ eyes, then. It’s like you’ve broken some sort of ice.

“If I’ve done something to offend you,” he begins, eyeing you with calculated caution. Like he’s testing the waters. “Or said something…”

“Then I’ll know you haven’t changed,” you supply. 

You can feel his eyes on you as you turn to the kitchen table and he moves, but he doesn’t follow you, instead lingering in the open space of the kitchen floor. He watches as you scrape peelings into the half-full bucket near the stove and grab its handle, almost yanking it off with the force of it. He makes a point of dipping his head slightly and cocking it to the side as you dry your hands aggressively with a fraying kitchen towel so as to better look you straight in the eye. He keeps his eyes on you unapologetically as you pass him, pushing through to the back door to make your way to the garden. 

You can’t tell if he follows you out. You don’t want to turn around to look. You stalk towards the compost heap on the far side of the field, a shabby thing held up by rotting planks of wood, poorly nailed together. Must be Arthur’s handiwork. Everything he lays his hands on begins to tear at the seams as soon as he’s done. He’s got a copy of some DIY manual from 1958 proudly displayed in the sitting room; its spine has almost fully disintegrated and the letters on the front have faded from years opposite a south-facing window, but it remains surrounded by trinkets and charms like a holy book on the mantelpiece. 

Gnats buzz around your ears. You slop the contents of the bucket onto the growing heap and turn, all too quickly, and nearly jump out of your skin when you see him directly in front of you. The bucket clatters dully against the grass as only plastic can, hitting the ground with the edge of its curved lip and bouncing off behind him. 

“Heard you’re living here, now. Permanently”

“Hearing all sorts of things, you are,” you mutter, almost out of breath as you push past him again and stoop to retrieve the bucket. 

He beats you to it, snatching it just out of your reach.

“Something about you needing to get away from something?”

“What do you care.”

Swipe. Miss. 

“Of course I care,” he drawls, walking backwards with quick, hurried steps to stay ahead of you as you move to lunge for the bucket. “What, your folks finally given up on ya?”

“Well you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

It’s a nasty thing to say. It’s really nasty. So nasty it makes you feel repulsed that you could even formulate such a thought, let alone choose to say it out loud. Because he was at least partly joking, and there’s no way you can spin it so you don’t look like a horrible, horrible person. His feet stumble as his expression falls, face becoming slack. And in that moment he looks every bit the beautiful, tormented twenty-five year old he is. Golden, freckled skin glows in the setting sun; bright green eyes pained and beaten.

Then he pulls himself together. 

“See you haven’t changed either.”

That’s a bit uncalled for. You’ve never had a go at him because of his parents before, and you don’t appreciate the insinuation. It causes you physical pain that he clocked you on the first try, though. It annoys you. Why is he pretending he knows anything about you? Your skin begins to burn again, and your eyes threaten to puff up like you’ve been stung. 

You snatch the bucket out of his hands and stalk back to the main house. 

He doesn’t follow you back in.

“God, you feel so good,” Bradley’s deep voice sent chills down your spine. Your hands trailed up his back and gripped his shoulders as his hips hit yours over and over again. “Fuck, baby.”

His words, mixed with his raspy voice, went right to your core, where you greedily sucked him in deeper.

Bradley groaned loudly, dipping his head down to suck on your collar bone. He wasn’t usually one for hickeys at his age, but he found himself loving to both give them and receive them ever since you and he first started this whole situation.

“Just like that,” you whimpered, squeezing your eyes shut tightly when you felt his lips pepper kisses all over your neck. 

“Like this?” He mutters as he fucked into you, making you see stars behind your closed eyes.

“Yes,”

One of his hands reaches down to wrap your leg around his waist, making him reach even deeper in you. “You like that, baby?” 

“Yes,” you say again, sliding one hand up to tug on his hair. “Please.”

Bradley grunted at your relentless tugging, the feeling of your fingers threading through his hair adding to the overall pressure currently building within him. “Fuck, you’re so hot,”

If he thought you were hot, he must not be aware just how damn near edible he is. 

He continued to suck mark after mark onto the skin of your neck, all while his hips rocked into yours with a friction that had you digging your nails into his bicep. One thing you both discovered was that Bradley had a bit of a thing for pain. He loved when you marked his skin with your nails or bit on his bottom lip whenever you kissed, but the thing he loved most was when you tugged on his hair in a death grip. The sore scalp and minor headaches he’d endure later on were so worth it.

So, as you raked your nails down his arm, Bradley just grunted against your neck, driving himself impossibly deeper into your inviting walls. “Yeah,” he breathed out, lifting his head so his lips brushed against yours. “I’m close, too, baby.” 

After doing this with you for nearly half a year, Bradley knew your body like the back of his hand. He knew how to get you off in every way possible, and he knew when you were close to that sweet peak of relief. 

Using the hand that wasn’t keeping him propped up above you, he presses the pad of his middle finger against your clit, which was still swollen from when he went down on you earlier. 

The added stimulation had you crying out, your fingers tightening in his hair as you came for the second time since you arrived at his house. “There you go, give it to me,” he muttered and his words somehow managed to prolong your high. “So good, letting me fuck you when we’re supposed to be with our friends.” 

As he continued to fuck into your warm and inviting core, you keep your hand tangled tightly in his hair and tug a bit harder, knowing that it would add to his pleasure. 

You were right, as he groaned against your mouth, a mantra of “Fuck,” leaving his kiss swollen lips when he came.

He fucks his release deeper into you, your greedy walls taking everything he gave, before he comes to a stop and lays his body gently down on top of yours. 

You release his hair and softly massage the top of his head, smoothing out the messy strands. As you bask in the afterglow, Bradley presses kisses to your bruised skin, a faint smirk on his lips at the sight of your hickey covered neck.

“I’m gonna miss this for the next six weeks,” he confessed and you had to calm your racing heart before it jumped to any conclusions.  

“What? Fucking me?” You ask with a quiet laugh, moving your hand to trace your fingers along his sweaty shoulder. 

“Fucking you,” he confirmed with a nod, making your smile fade a bit as he continued, “Kissing you, falling asleep with you in my arms. Just you in general.”

That made your smile reappear, and you moved his head so he was looking into your eyes. “You’re going to miss me? Or my body?” 

Bradley pressed a chaste kiss to your lips. “You,” he answered before he was standing up and holding his hand out to you. “Come on.”

You take his hand and let him pull you up and off of his comfy bed. “Where are we going?”

He steadies you in his arms, a proud smirk on his lips at your inability to stand up on your own because of the number he did on you. “Since we’re already half an hour late, why don’t we make our friends wait a bit longer?” 

You smile up at him, letting him guide you towards his bathroom. “What did you have in mind?”

He kisses you deeply, his free hand tangling into your messy hair. “Come join me in the shower and find out,”

-

You and Bradley showed up a whole hour after your promised arrival time, but neither of you cared too much.

After your shower, you complained that you didn’t have anything you needed at his house, and his reply was one that you were still thinking about now, “You know, it’d be a lot easier if you just kept some of your stuff at my place. You’re here all the time, yet you’re still always unprepared for these kinds of things,” he was referring to your complaint that all of your makeup was at your house, and you had just scrubbed your face clean of the natural look you applied before you got there.

“What, you’re okay with me keeping my makeup all over your bathroom counter so I can reapply it once you’re done fucking it off me?” You had asked, half joking and half totally serious. 

“I don’t care, I’m barely in there, anyway. The room could use some personality,” was his response, and it had your mind thinking about things you didn’t usually allow yourself to dwell on for too long. 

Nearly six months you’ve been sleeping with him. Six months. 

And it’s been five months since you broke rule number one and fell for him. 

It was simple, easy, casual. 

You started out as nothing. You were a friend of Jake’s, and that in itself was a surprise, so it wasn’t much of a shock when he invited you to go with him to the Hard Deck. When Bradley arrived at the bar a few minutes after you and Jake did, he didn’t pay much attention to the girl under the blond’s arm.

Jake was definitely a ladies man, so to see him with his hand wrapped around a girl’s waist wasn’t all that surprising. He played pool with Nat for a bit before making his way over to the bar, barely acknowledging Jake as he ordered a beer. “Hey, Rooster!” The man greeted, his own beer sloshing around in the glass as he moved towards him. 

“Hangman,” Bradley muttered, hoping Penny would hurry up and hand him his drink. 

“I want to introduce you to my friend, Y/n,” 

That had Bradley turning his head in slight curiosity, a little shocked to hear that the girl currently stuck to his side was only a friend. When his eyes meet yours, his stoic expression drops. 

You were beautiful, to put it simply. 

He sweet talked his way into getting you to play pool with him, and later ended the night with you sprawled out on the back seat of his Bronco. He found himself under you, on top of you and in you several nights out of the week after that, and now the whole arrangement was about to be hitting the half a year mark. 

It started out casual; he’d be there when you needed him, and you’d be there when he needed you. 

The decision to not label it was a mutual one as you both believed it would be the best way to go about things. 

Only a month in was when you offered to sleep together without protection. You confessed that he was currently the only person you were seeing, and he also admitted that he wasn’t sleeping with anyone else as well. 

As the months went on, Bradley began getting more affectionate with you, especially in public and in front of the other guys. While you were sure you were falling for him, he had also been acting as if he was more than just a friend with benefits. 

He offered you to sleep over every time you found yourself underneath him well into the night, and he woke you up each day with a good morning kiss and smile.

He lets you wear his clothes, use the appliances in his kitchen and even asks you to stay for dinner most nights. 

All in all, he was the perfect boyfriend, but he wasn’t your boyfriend. He just acted like it. 

There was a bit of an age difference, with you being twenty five and him pushing thirty five. While he had never explicitly said it bothered him, and he sure as hell never acted like he had a problem with it, you assumed that was why he had yet to make it official with you. 

You weren’t reading too much into this, right? You couldn’t be. 

He was all over you when you were around, and texted you constantly when you were away from him. He wanted you to feel comfortable wearing his clothes, didn’t care if you ate the leftovers he was saving, and had told you on more than one occasion to start keeping some of your things at his house. 

And you had started to, kind of. 

Your phone charger was plugged in next to his, a few of your shirts and jeans were currently in the washing machine along with his own, and your beloved hoodie you got from your uni days had a seemingly permanent place on the left side of his bed.

There was no way you had been given the wrong impression, right?

Right?

As soon as you entered the crowded bar, your face makeup free and one of his old vintage shirts tucked into your jean shorts, Bradley was pulling you with him to where Nat stood next to the pool table. “Hey, Rooster,” she greeted as she handed him a cue, nodding in your direction. “Rooster’s girlfriend.”

You expected him to correct her, but he surprised you by just shaking his head and laughing quietly, pulling you closer to his side. Your face heated up as you met Jake’s eyes from across the room, and he smiled as he waved you over to where he was sitting at the bar. 

“Hey, I’ll be back in a sec,” you tell Bradley, and he leans down so he could hear you better in the loud bar. “I’m going to go get a drink, you want one?”

“Just one,” he answered before placing a kiss on your lips. “Hurry back so you can watch me kick Nat’s ass.”

Nat slapped his arm as you walked away, a dumb grin on your lips as you made your way to the bar. Jake welcomed you over with an arm around your shoulders and a kiss to your cheek. 

“Hey, Jake,” you say as you rest your hand on his chest. 

“Hey, sweetheart,” he answered, eyeing something behind you with a sly smirk. “Don’t look now, but your guy friend is glaring at me as if you’re his girlfriend or something.” 

Despite his words, you turn and look at Bradley anyway. His brown eyes were on the two of you, furrowed and clouded over with what you think is jealousy. You held back a forming grin, your face heating up at the fact that he was getting jealous at the sight of you with another guy. Maybe it made you seem selfish, but you loved that he didn’t want you to be around other guys in the way you are currently with Jake. 

“He does realize that I’m the one who introduced him to you, right?” The blond asks and you just shake your head, leaning over the bar and ordering two beers. “You’re not official, right?”

You clench your jaw at the reminder and shake your head, “No,”

Jake takes a swig of beer as he runs his hand up and down your back in a friendly kind of gesture. “Then I don’t understand why he’s coming over here right now,”

At that, you turn just in time to see Bradley step into your space, his hand on your arm as he tugged you away from Jake. “Hands to yourself, Hangman,” he says coldly, eyeing the other man with a suspicious glance. “We both know I’m the one who’s taking her home after this.” 

His words dripped with a sense of possessiveness, and the whole thing had a surge of lust flow through your body. “My intentions are pure, Rooster,” Jake winked at the two of you as Bradley pulled you into his side. “You don’t need to worry about me.” 

“Is that right?” Bradley questioned but didn’t really care for the answer. 

“Relax, Bradley,” you murmur, handing him one of the beers. He didn’t take his eyes off Jake as he blindly took it from you, the cool bottle a nice contrast against his heated skin. “I came here with you, remember? That means I’m leaving with you, too.”

That had him meeting your eyes with a proud smirk on his lips, seemingly satisfied with your words. He gives Jake an over exaggerated shrug before pulling you along with him. “Later, Hangman,”

He tugged you over to the pool table once again, his hand sliding from your arm to your hip, where he squeezed slightly. You settle against his side, this position feeling more like where you were supposed to be than just an embrace. 

Staying true to his word, Bradley took you back home a few hours later, and you spent the rest of the night wrapped around him in more ways than one, and giving in to his quiet plead of, “Stay with me tonight,”

It was the fifth night in a row he’s asked you to do that, and the fifth time you’ve said yes without hesitation. 

-

The next morning, Bradley woke you up by going down on you until he had you coming twice. He didn’t ask you to return the favor, simply muttering something about “Needing his fix to start the day,” 

You help him pack any last minute things, before driving him to the dock in your car. This would be his second deployment since this whole ordeal started, and this time you were completely in love with him. You weren’t sure how you would cope with not seeing him for six weeks, and you wanted him to know that you’d be thinking about him the whole time he was gone. 

As you stood with him on the dock, you gazed up into his brown eyes with a sense of longing. “Thanks for coming with me this time,” he spoke quietly, making you grin up at him. 

The first deployment was just two weeks into your situationship, and since you weren’t really all too familiar with everything that made up the marvel of a man named Bradley Bradshaw, you stayed home and sent him a simple text that wished him luck.  

“Of course,” you reply, inching closer to him when his hands found home on your waist. Your eyes trailed over the scars on his cheek, and you refrained from reaching out to trace them with your finger. “I’m going to be thinking about you every single day, you know.”

This was it.

Bradley smiled down at you, leaning in and running his nose along the edge of your jaw. “You will?” He hummed, pressing various kisses to the marks he had left on your neck the night prior. When you nodded, he pulled back and took your chin between his thumb and index finger, guiding your lips to his in a lingering kiss. “I bet I know what part of me you’ll miss most.”

He was teasing you, but you were about to put your heart in the palm of his hand. “I’ll miss all of you,” 

Bradley grinned and took you into his arms in a tight embrace. “I’ll miss you, too,”

From his hunched over position, your mouth was right next to his ear, meaning he was at the perfect height for you to whisper, “I think I’m falling for you,” 

There it was.

You had given him your heart. It was his to take, and you supposed it was also his to break, as it was like a switch flipped inside him.

His body tensed against yours, and you immediately regret ever opening your mouth. Before you could take your words back, Bradley pulls away and keeps his hands on your waist as he mutters, “What?”

You felt your eyes burn instantly, your lower lip threatening to quiver as you stared up at him. “I..” You weren’t sure what to say. You had clearly mistaken your role in his life, and you wished you had never said anything. You had completely fucked things up. But there was no going back now. “I’m falling for you, Bradley.” 

His eyes flicker between yours before he stands back up to his full height. “That’s what I thought you said,” he muttered under his breath. You feel your heart fall as he steps away from you, his arms dropping back to his sides. “Fuck, I wish you didn’t tell me that.”

You quickly begin building walls up around your heart as you stand your ground, swallowing harshly as you ask, “Why not?” 

Bradley’s eyes turn cold as he answers you, “Because that wasn’t what this was supposed to be,”

It was as if that was the most obvious answer in the world. 

You shake your head and wrap your arms around yourself, glancing around at the many people who were sending their loved ones off with sad smiles and hugs. “I’m sorry. I can’t help how I feel, Bradley,” you say quietly and he just scoffs. 

“We were just having fun, Y/n,” he says and grabs his bag that he had set down on the dock when you arrived. He slings it over his shoulder and places his aviators over his eyes. “That’s all this was. You’re ten years younger than me, what did you think was going to happen here? We’re in two different places in our lives, and I thought that was obvious.”

You break eye contact as the first of many tears begin to fall. “It wasn’t,” was all you managed to say before he was sighing heavily and backing away from you. 

“If that’s the case, sorry for leading you on,” he said as he turned and began walking up the ramp. He had only walked about four steps before he stopped with a heavy sigh. He turned to glance back at you, seeing that you hadn’t moved from your spot, and you hadn’t taken your eyes off the wooden dock below you. “Look, I don’t want to leave it like this, but I need to go. I’ll call you if I can, okay? We’ll talk more about it when I come back.”

You just nod, not bothering to lift your head and meet his eyes.

Without another word being shared between the two of you, Bradley steps onto the carrier deck and waits to be shipped off. Though he knows he shouldn’t, he glances up at the dock and his heart falls at what he saw. 

You were still where he left you, but that was when he finally caught sight of the tears that were steadily rolling down your face. You did a pretty good job at hiding them when he was right next to you, but now that he was far away, you had lifted your head and he was given a clear view of your pretty face as you cried. 

He realized then that he had royally fucked up, and he needed to make things right before he left for a month and a half. 

Bradley watched as an elderly woman gently placed her hand on your arm, surely thinking that you were crying because you were sad about having to say goodbye to your loved one, when in reality he had just broken your heart. 

As you began making your way through the crowd and towards your car, he cursed under his breath and fumbled around in his bag for his phone, regret filling his body as he clicked on your contact. 

He watched as you stopped walking through the crowd and pulled out your phone, and to his surprise, you actually answered. “What?” You sounded so sad, and it only made him further regret the words he said to you.

It wasn’t even the truth, and he hoped you would give him the chance to explain that to you. He needed to be quick, though, because he knew he would quickly lose service once the carrier started moving. “Baby, I’m sorry,” he rasped out, his heart skipping a beat when he saw the way you turned to look over at him. He tried to meet your eyes as he continued, “I’m sorry, okay? Let’s talk about this now.”

You furrow your brows and shake your head. “There’s nothing to talk about, Bradley,”

“Yes, there is,” he insisted, feeling his heart drop once the carrier started to pull away from the dock. 

“There’s not,” you muttered. “I mistook my place, disrespected your boundaries and that’s on me. Completely my fault.”

“No, that’s- no,” he begged but he knew he didn’t have enough time to get through to you. “Please, just, wait for me. I’ll call you as soon as I can, we’ll talk and-”

“And what, Bradley?” You cut him off. “You said it yourself; I’m too young for you. Too immature. It’s best if we just end this now so we can both stop wasting our time.”

“You’re not a waste of time,” he said quickly, watching as your form slowly began to disappear the further he drifted away from you. “I’ve loved every second I’ve spent with you, and I think I’m-” 

Before he could also give you his heart, you had broken it with a simple sentence, “You’re cutting out,” and you were, too, but somehow your last few words were crystal clear. “I know where we stand now. Goodbye, Bradley.”

And then you hung up. And he was left to drop his hand back down to his side in defeat as he silently prayed he was able to call you within the next few days. 

-

A whopping six hours had passed since Bradley had been shipped off when he found himself missing you. 

His arms ached to be wrapped around you, his lips missed the taste of yours, and his heart longed with a sense of need to know that you would still be his once he returned home. 

His.

Bradley had to laugh. 

You weren’t his.

He hadn’t managed to step up and ask you to take things to the next level yet before he was ruining everything. He hadn’t given a possible real relationship with you a chance.

God, he was so mean, belittling you as if you deserved to be treated with anything other than respect and kindness. He acted like a proper asshole, and he deserved to feel all the things he felt right now. 

Shame. Guilt. Regret. Anger. He felt all of it all at once, and he hated himself for hurting you.

Had he known the sad sight of you crying because of him was all he needed to get his act straight, he would’ve told you he loved you when you confessed to falling for him back on the dock. 

Bradley loves you. Why did it take losing you for him to realize that?

A couple weeks passed before he was allowed the opportunity to call you, and as he put your number in, he found himself praying to anyone that may have been listening that you would answer. 

He felt a little more than deflated when it rang five times before he was sent to your voicemail. He listened to your sweet voice ask him to leave you a message, and he did, but he also knew you wouldn’t be able to call him back once you listened to the message.

If you listened to it at all.

“Hey, sweet girl. I… God, I wish you picked up, but I understand why you didn’t. A few weeks ago…fuck, I was so out of line, baby, and I’m sorry for that. I didn’t mean what I said. I didn’t mean any of it, I’m just a fucking idiot when it comes to this kind of thing and I threw all my issues on you, and you didn’t deserve that,” Bradley waited a beat or two before he continued, “I’m so sorry. I miss you, and I know I have no right to ask this of you, but I hope I can see you on the day I get back to San Diego. I only have just under a month to go, and I can’t wait to see you and talk about this in person, if you’ll let me.”

He felt pathetic, leaving you a sappy message you couldn’t even reply to. 

“I’m sorry, again, and I hope things have been going well for you,” he ended the message after that, reluctantly hanging up and returning back to his bunk, where he threw himself down on the bed that felt too empty without you by his side. 

-

It went on like that for weeks. 

Bradley would go to sleep, wake up, complete whatever he needed to do for the day, then do it all over again, all while thinking about you. 

He was counting down the days until he was able to return home and back to you, but he wasn’t sure he even had the right to seek you out once he was off the carrier. 

He had called you again a few days ago, and you had once again given him your voicemail. Two calls in, and it was silent on your end. He missed you terribly, missed your flowery scent, your kind smiles, your voice, and the feeling of your body tucked against his. 

Yeah, he missed the sex, but he missed you more. All of you. 

You were so close to being his. You had put your heart on your sleeve, completely his for the taking, and he rejected you. Like a fucking idiot. 

He knew he would get an earful from Nat once he got back, and he was honestly looking forward to it. He knew he deserved it, and he couldn’t think of a better person to call him out on his bullshit than his best friend. 

Another week flew by after he successfully completed his mission, and he was a few quick hours away from the same dock he had left you on a month and a half ago. 

While he didn’t expect you to be there to greet him once he stepped off the carrier, he still felt his heart break a bit as he finally let it all sink in. A few feet from where he stood now, he had broken your heart.

He dropped his bag onto the dock below him as he pulled his phone out and called you, once again disappointed when he was sent to your voicemail. Before he could stop himself, he left you a message, “Hey, it’s me. I’m back home now, and I still really want to see you. I want to try to explain myself and why I said the things I did. I’m still so sorry, Y/n/n, really, I am,” he ended it after that, and used the last bit of battery he had left to call Nat in hopes she would come and pick him up. 

Like he expected, Nat did end up chewing him out during the entire ride home, and even in his own driveway. Bradley just sat there and took it, knowing he deserved every harsh dig that was thrown at him and more. 

When she angrily reached over and hugged him in the car, she promptly told him to get out and that she would see him later at the Hard Deck. 

Bradley unlocked the front door and stepped into his house, the silence being the last thing he wanted to be met with. You were in your twenties, you were young and loud and cheerful, he had gotten so used to how chaotic his life had become since you entered it. It was chaotic in the best way, and he missed the loud laughs you would emit as he carried you down the hall to his room, or when the two of you would skip out on beers with your friends to watch a comedy in his living room instead. 

He sulked his way to his room, and his heart deflated even more at the sight he was met with. Nat had gone on about how she had to use the key Bradley gave her to let you into his house while he was away, and how she was confused about that until now. 

Gone was your phone charger and old movies you kept by the TV he had on his dresser, and he was sure your clothes in his laundry room were picked up as well. The left side of his bed was bare of your uni hoodie, a thing he had a strong amount of fondness for.

Coming home to a quiet house was one thing, but walking into a bedroom that lacked any personality at all was something else. The small things you kept in there made it appear more lived in, more cared for than he had ever tried to make it look, and he once again was reminded just how much he had fucked up.

You made him happy, were the reason he looked forward to the end of his days because it would likely mean he would end them with you, like he had been for the good part of the last six months.

Bradley let out a frustrated sigh as he threw his bag onto the bed. He plugged his phone in before heading into the bathroom, his eyes glancing at the spotless counter. A few of your face washes and creams had taken up space next to the sink the last time he was in here, but now they were gone too. 

He quickly realized how much he loved having your things at his house. God, did he miss you. 

After the quickest shower of his life, Bradley got dressed in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt and unplugged his phone. It had only been charged up to thirty four percent, but he didn’t plan on going on the device too much once he arrived at the Hard Deck.

He grabbed his keys and wallet before he started up his beloved Bronco, typing out a quick text to you in hopes you’d actually answer him this time.

You’re ignoring me and that’s fine, but I hope I’ll be able to see you at the Hard Deck tonight? If not, maybe we can meet up later and I can explain everything to you. Please. I don’t want it to end like this.

He didn’t want it to end at all, but especially not with you thinking you weren’t all he could ever want. 

To his surprise, you had actually gotten back to him pretty fast, and your response had him quickly backing out of his driveway and speeding down the road towards the Hard Deck. 

The slam of the car door rings in the night. The car is dead silent; no radio on, no phone call over bluetooth, no nothing. It’s never been this quiet.

The engine purrs gently. It’s strange. He’s sat right next to you, but he might as well be on the other side of the world. He hasn’t even asked for your address.

“The fuck you doin’ out here?”

His voice sounds strange. Maybe it’s the silence. Makes it sound almost distorted. Maybe it’s ‘cause you haven’t heard his actual voice in months. Maybe you forgot what it sounds like. Maybe it’s the hint of concern in his voice. 

No - that can’t be right. This is the same guy who told you to “walk it off” when you got your femur shattered by some dickhead with a golf club. 

“Just some guy,” you mumble. If there was one place you didn’t want to get ditched, it was here. Your phone’s nearly dead, and you don’t really know your way back to the main road. But he can’t possibly know that. Right? All you sent him was your location.

“Boyfriend?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Jesus, darlin’, no need to bite my head off.”

Maybe you’ve come in a bit too amped. Nevermind the fact that the last time you saw him, he blew your cover to help his own; he’s come to pick you up out in the middle of nowhere at eleven p.m., no complaints, and he’s not said anything out of order yet. You’ve come to think Tan’s the type of guy you gotta judge on an encounter by encounter basis. Maybe you shouldn’t, but it makes it easier.

“Not anymore, I guess.”

He grunts - there’s no other word for it - and brings a hand up to smooth down his moustache.

“Forgive me, darlin’, but you don’t sound very upset.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not exactly flowing over with love for the guy.”

“You really know how to fuckin’ pick ‘em, don’t ya,” he mutters. You glare. 

You’d think after having known him for - what, six, seven years? - you’d be used to his bite by now. Maybe it’s just tonight. You’re in a weird mood. If he calls you sensitive, you might actually start to cry.

“Probably better off then, ain’t ya, if he’s left ya to hang about outside by yourself an’ all.”

He must have clocked that you’re a bit off tonight. It comes out as an afterthought, barely audible above the soft purr of the engine.

“What you goin’ out with a prick like that for, anyway?”

“S’not like anyone else wants me.”

Everything gets heavy, then. In your peripheral vision, you try not to notice the way his knuckles tighten around the wheel, or the way his jaw tenses just the slightest bit. He doesn’t respond. You didn’t think he would. You’re in a torturing mood. Just want to poke and prod at the wound for a bit and see what happens. Because he says you know how to pick ‘em, but won’t let you pick him. Even if you both know he wants to be picked.

After about ten minutes of ear deafening silence, he clears his throat quietly. 

“Still workin’ down the bank?”

You hum, non-committedly. You can’t tell if you’re happy or sad that he’s stopped pushing for more on this other guy. Odds are, he’d be in the papers tomorrow for all the wrong reasons. You’ve got goosebumps from the cold. They itch a bit. Maybe waiting outside wasn’t the best idea, but it’s better than hanging around inside like some loner. Maybe you were just eager to see him.

You see him less now that you’ve gone civilian. Five bullet wounds and a back injury will do that to a person. It’s been around seven months since you last had anything to do with him. Seven months since you quit. The last message from him on your phone is from nine months ago. It says, “give me back my tie.” You didn’t respond. 

More than anything, you’re tired. And bored.

You never told him you worked at a bank.

“Might get back into liquidation. Lemon says he knows a guy.”

It’s a lie. You don’t want to get back in, and Lemon wouldn’t help you even if you did. Doesn’t mean you don’t hate your life the way it is right now.

“Nah, you wouldn’t survive out there, darlin’,” he mutters, little finger flicking up to switch on the indicators. “Times have changed. Good thing like you? They’d tear ya apart, I mean, look at ya.”

You can’t tell if he means it. Can’t tell if it means something. It hurts more than you think it does. It’s also kinda backhanded, even if it is a lie.

Flecks of rain have begun to spatter the windshield, their outlines illuminated by each passing streetlight. You’re seething. The type of thing where you can literally smell it off someone. You want him to mean it. But he probably doesn’t. And even if he does, he’s not gonna do anything about it.

“D’you even know where you’re going? You don’t have an address.”

“You think I don’t know where you live? Give me some credit.”

You never gave him your address.

“I’m not going to mine.”

He frowns, then, lips twitching like he wants to say something, like he’s getting ready to speak but hasn’t decided on the words yet. You can almost hear the sound of him blinking, like a cartoon. He looks kinda funny when he’s frustrated, like a muppet with a big, bushy moustache.

The hand comes out to gesture a “what the fuck” before he even speaks, almost in slow motion, like the thought is loading.

“Well, why the fuck didn’t you say somethin’ before I-”

“You didn’t fuckin’ ask, mate,” you groan, “Literally didn’t even fuckin’ say anything until-”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know where the fuck-”

“I didn’t ask you to know, I was gonna fuckin’ tell you.”

“Takin’ your sweet fuckin’ time, ain’t ya!”

“Would you relax, it’s not like you’ve gone the wrong way, I would have-”

“You know,” he cuts in, pointing his index finger accusatorily at you, “you’re a lot easier to deal with when you shut the fuck up.”

You shove his hand away. He’s not making sense.

“Fuck you.”

Green becomes amber becomes red light, shining through the watery sheen of the windshield and hitting his skin like a coloured lens. Without the grumble of the engine, you can almost hear him breathe. It grounds you. Reminds you he’s a real human being. Sometimes he’s such a caricature that you forget. 

When he speaks next, his voice is uncharacteristically light, and void of aggression.

“Thinkin’ of gettin’ a new suit.”

It’s so dumb. It’s so. dumb. And no one cares. But it’s his attempt at normalcy, and it’s a hell of an olive branch, even if it does give you whiplash. You don’t even know what to say to that. What are you supposed to say to that? 

Go get one, then. You don’t want to pick another fight. You’ve already got steam coming out of your ears from the last one. But it’s not like he’s broke, or doesn’t know where to get one. He’s trying, he’s really trying to make conversation, so you voice - quietly - the only thought that comes to mind.

“I like your blue one. Not the… the dark blue one.”

“Not the dark blue one?”

“No, I mean, the dark blue one.”

And then, completely out of character, in a moment of absolute weakness;

“I’m going to Italy next week for a conference. Maybe you could… come with? Maybe get something…”

“Yeah, well, I ain’t got the time for that, do I.”

Shot down.

“Fine. Forget I said anything.”

He inhales deeply, like he’s either about to explode or implode. To your relief, he exhales slowly, a hand coming up to scratch at his stubble.

“Where you goin’, anyway?”

“A friend’s,” you mutter, pulling at the hems of your sleeves.

“Yeah, but where’d they live? I gotta drop you somewhere, right?”

“Just… The Square is fine.”

“No chance. Are you fuckin’ dense?”

“Jesus Christ, fine,” you huff, grabbing his phone from the cup holder so you can plug in the address. But it’s fucking locked. You don’t know why you thought it wouldn’t be. You click the power button a couple of times before shoving it into his lap. “Unlock it, then. Jesus.”

He mutters something you can’t hear, and tosses it back in your general direction. It almost ricochets off the arm rest. 

The audio assistant on google maps pipes up every thirty seconds. Other than that, it’s quiet. He’s always so unnecessarily tense. It gets to you. All you do is argue. But it’s not like you hate each other. Is it? If he did, he wouldn’t have come to pick you up. If you did, you wouldn’t have asked him.

The car slows to a halt. He lets out a long, loud sigh, and drums his fingers against the wheel. Then he stops, and turns to look at you for the first time since you got in. 

“For what it’s worth, I really am sorry, darlin’.”

“Thanks for the lift.”

You’ve dipped before he can get another word out. It smells like rain on tarmac, like sweat and humidity, like headache and sleep. Just before you slam the door shut, he leans over the passenger seat. 

“Wait, wait.”

You jerk forward and pull the door back open mid-swing. You glare. 

“What.”

“If you ever need somewhere to go, I’ve, uh… I’ve got a nice flat. Just up…”

You almost want to let yourself fall for it. Just for fun. His eyes are so serious it almost makes you laugh. You’ve never known him to be serious about anything. But you can’t stop the belittling scoff that leaves your lips before it’s too late.

You miss the way his eyes stay on you as you head up the steps and hit the buzzer. He stays parked outside for a good while after you’ve got in. 

Maybe one day he’ll get up and walk after you. 

Maybe.

It’s just the travel. Travel, and inhaling shit air, and eating shit food, and being all cramped up. You’re not even sure you ate. Hard to tell when each day bleeds into the next and time goes by a million miles an hour and not at all. 

Small feet and hands dig into the flesh of your thighs and stomach. The twins settle either side of your waist, gurgling and babbling to themselves. You sit in silence, staring at a patch of carpet, restless nails picking at frayed threads on the tattered armrest. Someone enters the room, voices speak, but it all sounds muffled. It isn’t until Molly pushes a saucer of biscuits under your nose that you come to, blinking heavily and mumbling disjointedly.

“Thank you.”

Molly glances at the clock on the wall. It’s got nine hands, one for Molly, one for Arthur, and one for each of the children. Does she keep a stack of them in a drawer somewhere, to add one on whenever a new one comes along?

“It’s getting late,” she mutters. 

Is it?

The thought that you might be keeping them up gnaws at you. You’re about to offer to retire for the evening, to apologise and head off, when Arthur stands. He hums, brows furrowed as though in deep thought, and shuffles into the hallway. As the air grows heavy with silence, your gaze rests back on Molly. 

“You know, I might just…”

The words die on your lips. They must have barely been audible, anyway, judging by Molly’s lack of reaction.

The odd child meanders into the room as you wait for Arthur to return. Bill’s at that age where you pretend you’re an adult, unsurprised and unscared. He barely spares you a second glance as he steps over to his mother, asking for the whereabouts of his book on Britain’s Most Dangerous Deepwater Sea-Creatures. 

Charlie’s not quite there yet, lingering in the hallway and peeking around the doorframe with wide eyes and a long, floppy, pink tongue. It’s the toy in his hands that catches your eye, a bright green dragon with blue spikes and huge eyes. He holds it around its neck so tight it might just pop off. 

You beckon him over. His eyes dart to his mother, then back to you, then back to his mother. Then he steels himself and tiptoes towards you.

“Y/N.”

He blinks. He looks like he’s going to chicken out and back away. 

You pull your hand away from the mouth of a teething George, wiping his saliva off on your sleeve and reaching behind your head. Lifting one of the many pendants from around your neck, you slip the chain onto your finger and hold it out to the seven year old in front of you.

“It’s yours, if you want it,” you say softly.

He eyes it timidly, looking up at you, then down at the pendant, then up at you, then back down at the pendant. The pendant’s a photo coin you bought at a museum gift shop when you were young; it’s got a celtic dragon pressed into its centre and waves decorating the rim.

“Take it,” you whisper. 

He smiles shyly, before snatching the chain with clumsy hands and shuffling away, not taking his eyes off of it for a second. The movement excites the twins, who squeal, and giggle, and squirm in your arms. One of them accidentally slaps you in the face. The other tries to shove their hand in your face, getting their hand stuck in your necklaces. 

“Come here,” you sigh, taking the soft, small, pudgy hand in yours to ease it out of the knot of chains. 

Four heavy knocks pound somewhere in the distance. 

The chains have gotten caught up in your hair, now. The child tugs, and you lurch, dangerously close to getting your fingers tangled up in the mess. 

A door slams in the distance. The bairn pulls his hand back, threatening to take a chunk of your scalp out with it. You grab hold of his hand again, murmuring for him to keep still, to relax, to stop pulling-

Then, from the doorway, with a kind lilt and a Yorkshire accent that makes your blood run cold as ice, comes a soft, deep voice, and surely you must be ill. Surely, you must have caught some fatal, delayed-onset disease, because the fever that burns at your skin, rippling in waves and numbing your wrists, is anything short of natural.

It hurts. It actually hurts. 

“Where’d you like ‘em, Molly?”

You might pass out. Jesus, you can hear your heartbeat squelching in your ears. You can vaguely hear Molly fussing about the time and we were beginning to think you weren’t coming back tonight and- 

Back? 

Soft, small hands slap at your wrists when they notice your attention has drifted. 

What does she mean, back? 

You’re still trying to untangle the knot in your hair, fingertips trying and failing to set you free. You can just about see the lower half of him where you sit, hunched over, with toddler spit trailing down your forearm and a fist in your hair. You can see the way his shirt sleeves have been rolled up to his elbows; see the sprigs of some kind of plant poking out from the handles of one of the plastic bags in his hands. 

He’s grown. Lived. Thrived, even, by the looks of things. 

It’s the smallest thing, but it fucks with your head. You haven’t grown, or lived, or thrived at all. You’re small. Ratty. Shrivelled, even, by the looks of things. 

As you finally detangle the child’s fingers from your hair, you get a proper look at him. He looks like he has friends. But not like he has to make any effort to keep them. Not even that; like it’s effortless for him to keep them. Like he’s got that kind of quiet magnetism. He looks like the type of guy someone else randomly brings to a night out and every friend of a friend tries to chat him up. Like he barely needs to say a word, but everyone still knows who he is and greets him when they see him.

What must he see when he looks at you? 

You feel sick.

You can see the exact moment he sees you because he frowns and cocks his head to the side. He says nothing as Molly’s fusses, eyes fixed on you with his lips barely parted, head half-turned to the side like it wants to tear away but can’t seem to force itself.

You’ve been sat by the fire too long; your face burns from it. Why they’ve lit a fire in mid-june is beyond you. 

“Now,” Molly says, waving you over, “Arthur’s set everything up for you, dear, though I’ve got to warn you, it’s no luxury hotel. That room’s barely been touched since there were farmers here, and that’s about fifty years ago, now…”

When did Arthur come back in?

“And Gideon told you about the plumbing, and the-”

“Yes,” you interject, heart beating in your throat, now, “Yes, thank you. Really, Molly, thank you so much. For everything.”

She carries on, turning to Remus. You feel lightheaded; so lightheaded, and it’s been such a long day and you’re exhausted, and she’s asked you something now, she’s actually asked you something and you can see her lips moving but you can’t hear a thing. 

“Sorry,” you say suddenly. “I’m just- I’m very tired. Could I maybe…?”

Is your voice really loud?

“Of course, dear,” Molly says, prying Arthur’s cup out of his hands. “You must be exhausted, all that travel. Here, Remus’ll walk you down, he’s staying in the other room. It’s no more than fifteen, twenty minutes down the road - will you manage?”

“Yes, I-,” you say, “that’s fine.”

“You’re more than welcome to stay here for the night if you like,” Arthur offers, insistently. “I wouldn’t want you walking down to that old shack at this hour of the night, why don’t-”

“She’s a grown woman, dear,” Molly fusses, reaching over to take Remus’ cup. 

When’d she find time to give him that?

They shoo the boys out and suddenly, in a heartbeat, the room is almost completely empty. 

Time slows way down, with a force that leaves your stomach surging like you’re on a plane taking a dive. This is the split second where Remus’ nonchalant facade breaks, when he first gets a good, up-close look at your face. Where he gets this look, this far-out and distanced look in his eyes, but you can’t make out what it is. And then it flashes before your eyes, dark and pained and sharp and twisted and it’s like you’ve both tapped into the same frequency for the millisecond it takes for the memory to flicker in front of your mind’s eye. 

Can he see the way your eyes gloss over?

“Remus, dear,” Molly’s voice tuts from behind him, “Would you mind? You’re just in the way, love.”

He doesn’t answer, eyes - not wide in surprise like yours, but narrowed; narrowed, unblinking, and concentrated. It fills your stomach with dread. Anything neutral in his surprise has melted away now that he’s had a moment to think and recollect. His forearms flex as he shifts the plastic bag in his hands to readjust the weight, head almost entirely cocked to the side as he stares at you, brows furrowed in something nearing anger and lips parted ever so slightly, like he might want to think about saying something but can’t quite decide what to say.

Surely they must have told him you’d be here?

“Remus?”

He almost jumps then, blinking and tearing his gaze away from you.

“‘course, Molly.”

His voice echoes in the room after he turns to let her through.

“Here,” Molly says, pulling the bag from your hands before you have a chance to hold on, “Remus’ll take that.”

Remus lets out what you can only describe as an affirmative grunt, just about polite enough for it not to be rude in front of Molly, grabbing your duffel by the strap and swinging it onto his shoulder. He’s gone out the door before you can say another word. 

You press a forced smile onto your lips and move to follow.

“What time will you be back tomorrow, dear?”

Molly’s unassuming tone chips away at you for reasons you can’t explain. 

“Not too late, Molly,” you mumble, tearing your eyes away from his back, flashing her what you hope looks like a tired but genuine smile and heading for the door, “Not too late.”

The old farmhouse down the lane from the Burrow is surrounded by overgrown weeds and old rubber tires. Some of the tires are as wide as you are tall, stacked on top of each other with tufts of green and yellow poking through the gaps in the threads.

The walk itself is less than quiet. He stalks in front of you, never closer than about six feet. Doesn’t even look back to check if you’re in tow. Though to be fair, besides actively diving into the brambles and brush that outline the lane, there’s not really anywhere you could go.

Bare wooden planks cover the floors, worn down from decades of use. There’s a simple, wood-burning stove in the corner of the front room, surrounded by stone walls. There are two doors on the back wall, one on the right, and one on the left. Two doors, two bedrooms. 

Two tenants , you remind yourself. 

This is where you live, now. On Gideon’s request, Molly and Arthur have been generous enough to let you stay here free of charge. It’s hard to pay rent when you can’t work. No one’s supposed to know you’re here, either, outside the Prewett-Weasleys.

And Remus Lupin, apparently. 

What the fuck is he doing here? You’ve not heard a word from or about him in years, literal years, and up he pops, like a jack-in-the-box. It’s knocked you for six; you drag your bag across the wooden floor into the room he didn’t stalk into and and sit down on the mattress, and then you just… sit there, staring out into the darkness until your eyes grow used to it and you can begin to see the outline of the handles on the dresser drawers on the opposite side of the room. 

Don’t even know how long it takes you to move, strip, and shuffle under the covers, but by the time you do, your joints are stiff and sore and the first signs of daybreak have begun to push through the thinly woven fabric of the curtains.

Remus must be long gone by the time you wake. It’s unsurprising; judging by how bright the sun is, you’re guessing you’ve slept in. You have a vague memory of almost waking a few hours ago and hearing the sound of rushing water outside. Gideon had mentioned that there wasn’t any indoor plumbing, but the way your nightclothes stick to your skin makes the thought of dousing yourself in a bucket of cold water outside a heavenly fantasy come to life. 

There’s no way to get lost on your way back to the Burrow; the farmhouse is at the end of a dead end, so your feet move on auto pilot. 

There’s shouting in the halls as you step through the open back door, echoing up the stairwells. Moving through the kitchen in shoes you probably should take off, you stick your head through the doorway and almost trip over the two tiny streaks of ginger that run into you as they head around the corner. They land on their bottoms and freeze to a halt with big, brown eyes that peer up at you and just look up, and up, and up until they reach your face. 

You tower over them, a ghastly vision with matted hair and sunken eyes, skin gaunt and discoloured. Moments tick by before you bend down to reach both hands out, one in the direction of either bairn. They blink.

You wiggle your fingers when the bairns don’t move, and something clicks behind their eyes as they heave themselves onto their feet and reach for your hands. Each twin grips two of your fingers tightly as you lead them down the hall, stooped low as they waddle along the tattered carpet in their nappies. You lead the boys through the doorway first, shuffling after them.

Molly stands behind an ironing board, one hand wrapped around a small bundle, the other resting on top of a nearby dresser. Her head darts up when she hears footsteps shuffling along the carpet. 

“Think these belong to you.”

The boys have taken a liking to you. You can’t imagine why. They cling onto your legs the minute you step into the open kitchen door and babble a thousand innocent questions in your direction without cessation.

It’s good. Idle hands make great feeding grounds for nervous breakdowns.

Molly’s got you peeling potatoes by the time Arthur and Remus get back. He’s working as a sort of farmhand, you’ve learned. Though the Weasleys aren’t really farmers, so you’re not sure how that works. But Arthur’s always fancied himself quite the handyman, so odds are he’s got things brewing. Plenty of farmers around these parts anyway, bound to be plenty of work to be done. 

The spuds rest in a net bag in front of you, a muddy brownish colour with green and yellow eyes poking through the gaps in the mesh. Molly’s upstairs trying to give the children a bath. Judging by the shrieks and howls echoing down the stairwell, it’s not going very well.

Molly’s left some record on, some woman warbling out of tune on a track that is ninety-five per cent harp. It’s got you dissociating, hands moving without thought, carving strips of potato skins onto a board in a steady rhythm. Tuber after tuber gets tossed into the pot. The ever-lasting scent of manure from the nearby fields doesn’t agree with your insides yet, and you can taste the bile on your tongue as the smell of starch and water from the skins hit your nose. 

Midsummer months bring heavy air, slick with sweetness and humidity and the type of heat that makes your clothes stick to every crevice and plane of you with sweat. You thought it was just you; just a summer’s day of physical labour in a house with terrible ventilation, but the air that hit your cheeks as you stuck your head out of a window in the stairwell was even warmer than the stale air inside. Right now, in the late evening when the fever breaks and a cool shade begins to descend over the fields, it feels like being let out of a car that’s been left in the sun for too long. Flesh on your cheeks, arms, and legs burning and swollen with warmth, you heave the back door open and inhale deeply through the nose, hand resting on the handle of the door to ground you. 

There’s that smell in the air that you only get in warm, humid places. It settles in your belly and calms your nausea. The bugs don’t even cross your mind. Bugs be damned. The setting sun is painting streaks of orange and pink over the cloudy skies. It feels like a dream, something not quite real, after months of being unable to feel your fingers and toes from piercing frost. For a moment, you feel like the sun could swallow you whole, pick you up and lift you and bring you in on yourself. You’re not sure how long you linger in the doorway; could be a minute, could be half an hour.

Your chores beckon, and you move to sit at the kitchen table. The soft strumming of the harp in the background seems less intrusive now; maybe it’s because the singer hasn’t sung a note in a minute. The pot begins to fill slowly, and your fingers begin to prune. A bead of sweat trickles down your temple but disappears before it can reach your cheek.

“Thought I might find you here.”

Shit. You suck in a sharp breath, droplets of crimson trickling down the crease of your thumb. You stick the throbbing digit in your mouth, wincing at the starch residue from the skins. 

From the corner of your eye, you see him pull a tissue out from a nearby box on the counter. You almost trip on your skirts as you lurch to your feet to grab the handles and heave the pot of potatoes onto the hob, threatening to slosh water all over the chipped tiles in your haste to avoid him trying to give it to you. But he lingers after you, coming up to lean against the counter beside you. 

He’s trying. Somewhere, deep down, you know he’s trying. The fact that he’s even talking to you is something, let alone the tissue hanging limply in his outstretched hand. But you can’t find it in you to pretend that you’re in the mood. Maybe you’re overtired. Maybe… maybe it’s something else. You yank the tissue out of his grasp unceremoniously, avoiding looking at his face and pressing it to your skin after rinsing it in the sink.

“So,” Remus says slowly, quietly feigning nonchalance as you wrap the tissue around your thumb, “what are you doing here, then?”

When he talks, it’s like he’s trying not to speak too loud. Everything sounds like it’s being murmured in your ear. You half expect to feel his breath on your neck. You remind yourself that he’s got some nerve talking to you in the first place. You purse your lips.

“What are you doing here?”

Something changes in Remus’ eyes, then. It’s like you’ve broken some sort of ice.

“If I’ve done something to offend you,” he begins, eyeing you with calculated caution. Like he’s testing the waters. “Or said something…”

“Then I’ll know you haven’t changed,” you supply. 

You can feel his eyes on you as you turn to the kitchen table and he moves, but he doesn’t follow you, instead lingering in the open space of the kitchen floor. He watches as you scrape peelings into the half-full bucket near the stove and grab its handle, almost yanking it off with the force of it. He makes a point of dipping his head slightly and cocking it to the side as you dry your hands aggressively with a fraying kitchen towel so as to better look you straight in the eye. He keeps his eyes on you unapologetically as you pass him, pushing through to the back door to make your way to the garden. 

You can’t tell if he follows you out. You don’t want to turn around to look. You stalk towards the compost heap on the far side of the field, a shabby thing held up by rotting planks of wood, poorly nailed together. Must be Arthur’s handiwork. Everything he lays his hands on begins to tear at the seams as soon as he’s done. He’s got a copy of some DIY manual from 1958 proudly displayed in the sitting room; its spine has almost fully disintegrated and the letters on the front have faded from years opposite a south-facing window, but it remains surrounded by trinkets and charms like a holy book on the mantelpiece. 

Gnats buzz around your ears. You slop the contents of the bucket onto the growing heap and turn, all too quickly, and nearly jump out of your skin when you see him directly in front of you. The bucket clatters dully against the grass as only plastic can, hitting the ground with the edge of its curved lip and bouncing off behind him. 

“Heard you’re living here, now. Permanently”

“Hearing all sorts of things, you are,” you mutter, almost out of breath as you push past him again and stoop to retrieve the bucket. 

He beats you to it, snatching it just out of your reach.

“Something about you needing to get away from something?”

“What do you care.”

Swipe. Miss. 

“Of course I care,” he drawls, walking backwards with quick, hurried steps to stay ahead of you as you move to lunge for the bucket. “What, your folks finally given up on ya?”

“Well you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

It’s a nasty thing to say. It’s really nasty. So nasty it makes you feel repulsed that you could even formulate such a thought, let alone choose to say it out loud. Because he was at least partly joking, and there’s no way you can spin it so you don’t look like a horrible, horrible person. His feet stumble as his expression falls, face becoming slack. And in that moment he looks every bit the beautiful, tormented twenty-five year old he is. Golden, freckled skin glows in the setting sun; bright green eyes pained and beaten.

Then he pulls himself together. 

“See you haven’t changed either.”

That’s a bit uncalled for. You’ve never had a go at him because of his parents before, and you don’t appreciate the insinuation. It causes you physical pain that he clocked you on the first try, though. It annoys you. Why is he pretending he knows anything about you? Your skin begins to burn again, and your eyes threaten to puff up like you’ve been stung. 

You snatch the bucket out of his hands and stalk back to the main house. 

He doesn’t follow you back in.

In the red dark [5.8k] @sergeantxrogers

Tattoo artist!Bucky x Reader

His eyes trapped yours in their vice-like grip as he stared up at you, fingers brushing against the hem of your jeans, and you swallowed heavily. You felt the rush of alcohol in your head fizzle out into smoke and embers as you sobered up quicker than you ever have in your life.

"Are you sure?"

You swallowed again. Nodded.

There was a small twitch in his eyebrows, and he narrowed his gaze. "It'll hurt."

Despite your heartbeat drowning out all sounds around you, despite the cold sweat on the back of your neck, despite the knowledge that you'll probably regret this - whatever this actually was - in the morning, you smiled.

"Then I guess I'll just have to hold your hand."

{personal comment: This does something to me, I can’t even explain it, but I enjoyed it so much and I would love to read more}

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The forever third wheels [6.6] @witchywithwhiskey

Bucky x reader

summary: it's the weekend of your town's annual valentine's day carnival and you go with your group of friends, though you can't help but be sad you don't have someone special in your life. your friend, and fellow third wheel, bucky barnes makes it his mission to give you a valentine's day you won't soon forget—and show you how special you are to him.

{personal comment: I live for a good friends to lovers and this is perfect. Bucky is such a sweetheart and I got all the feels during reading}

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In Five Years [4.9k] @elixirfromthestars

Bucky x Enhanced!Reader

Summary: Bucky was having a hard time expressing his feelings about finally being free from the Winter Soldier program. To help him out, you suggested writing a letter to his future self and burying it in a time capsule to visit this moment again in the future. The plan was to open the time capsule five years from now. That was until Thanos showed up.

[personal comment: I love reading about Bucky in Wakanda and this amazing piece made me feel so many things at once. It mainly made me cry but it’s so beautiful, I love it so much}

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Redamancy [7.3k] @renxzs

Roommate!Bucky x reader

Summary: Maybe it was a bit naive to think moving in with your best friend and long-time crush, Bucky Barnes, was going to be some smooth road that led to an admittance of mutual feelings for one another and a happily-ever-after ending, wrapped up nicely in a bow. Naive indeed; especially when you have to consider the fact that Bucky is the biggest womanizer you know.

{personal comment: My heart broke and healed again during reading this. It’s perfectly written and means so much to me. I come back to this fic from time to time}

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Light, asunder [8.9k] @divine-mistake

Merc!Bucky x Prinzess!Reader

Summary: “Don’t ever do that again.” It would sound like his usual chastising, but Bucky’s voice is soft. If you weren’t crying so hard, struggling to catch your breath, maybe you would hear the note of fear within his words. “Don’t care how mad you get, don’t care how much I piss you off. You don’t go running off into the woods where I can’t find you, Star. Never again.”

You curl your fingers into the fabric of his shirt, right above where his heart lay beating in his chest, and hope he realizes that it’s a promise. A swear.

{personal comment: This is so magical somehow and I love it so much. Bucky growing soft and protective always has me weak}

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Here's Looking At You, Kid [7.2k] @cryonme

Boxer!Bucky x reader

Summary: bucky hated his job just as much, if not more, than you did. but if you wanted to live the remainder of your lives together comfortably, you'd both have to stick it out. which included him having to fight your ex husband.

{personal comment: I've been going through so much while reading this fic, it’s truly beautiful. Bucky's love for the reader and the remorse for hurting her by getting hurt himself was so touching}

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The Key Jangle [9.3k] @delaber

Bucky x reader

Summary: Sick and tired of your many recent bad dates, you’re dreading yet another Valentine’s Day alone. When Bucky offers to show you what a night out is supposed to look like according to him, you get to experience what it’s like to date your best friend.

{personal comment: Bucky is so charming and sweet and that date was amazing. I really enjoyed reading it}

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Stiches [3.6k] @teamatsumu

Doctor!Bucky x reader

Summary: You’re just a clueless new medical student. You’re not equipped to deal with charming, witty, handsome doctors. Especially not ones with pretty blue eyes that make you weak in the knees.

{personal comment: I'm all in for Bucky as a doctor and this was lovely written}

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Warm Comforts [2.1k] @jadedvibes

Beefy roommate!Bucky x reader

Summary: A sudden breakup causes you to feel self-doubt and insecurity about your situation. Fortunately, it’s nothing your sweet roommate and a little Legally Blonde can’t fix.

{personal comment: Bucky is so attentive and sweet, it made me yearn for him so much}

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Before sunset, I fell [4.5k] @atlaese ♤

Modern!Bucky x reader

Summary: Apparently, when you stay in the honeymoon suite, the husband and the ring on your left hand come with the package. *terms and conditions apply. refunds are not issued.

{personal comment: The beginning had me hooked already and charming and flirty Bucky is a blessing. I really enjoyed this}

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Under the Sheets [3.9k] @vanderlustwords

Bucky x reader

Summary: Bucky spends more time out of his dorm than in it with how much his roommate amorously makes love to his girlfriend. Luckily, his cute across-the-hall neighbor is generous about lending her place to him. Bucky’s unsure if he wants to hug or kiss his roommate for putting him in the situation he is in now. 

{personal comment: I enjoyed reading this, and Bucky being so cute}

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Too hot, An Arm Cold [2.9k] @t-lostinworlds

Bucky x reader

Summary: Cuddles from Bucky Barnes was probably one of the greatest things ever. But it was difficult to prove that point true in the middle of a heatwave while the apartment air conditioner was broken. Good thing he has a cold metal arm.

{personal comment: This is so wholesome and sweet, the perfect amount of fluff}

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These cold rooftops [3.6k] @atlaese

Avenger!Bucky x Vigilante!Reader

Summary: You're just doing your job as the local vigilante in new york, why can't bucky barnes leave you alone? Spoiler alert: He is very much in love with you, even though he has never seen your face.

{personal comment: This was nice to read, I enjoyed their interactions}

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Me & the devil [11.2k] @artficlly

Outlaw!Bucky x Saloon girl!Reader

Summary: The Diamondback Saloon and Hotel has always attracted bad men, and Bucky Barnes happens to be one of them

{personal comment: It was so thrilling to read this, the built up to the angst is amazing and I've been on edge the whole time reading this. I'm in love with this and the writing style and it deserves so much more recognition}

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Keeping Score @all1e23

Bucky x reader Fake-Dating AU

Summary: After hearing you begging Steve to pretend to be your fake boyfriend to keep your family off your back, Bucky quickly jumps at the chance to play your boyfriend even though you’re a hundred percent sure he hates you. What could possibly go wrong?

{personal comment: Bucky is such a charmer, but also so perceptive and soft. This gave me the feels, I really liked it}

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Spilled wine [3.3k] @sunmoonandeddie

King!Bucky x reader

Summary: You’re nothing more than a servant who happens to warm the bed of the king.  At least, that’s what you thought you were.

{personal comment: This gave me so many butterflies. Bucky is so perfect, it was truly lovely to read}

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Happy Mistake @sunlightdances

College!Bucky x College!Reader

Summary: Being assigned roommates with Bucky. He's a giant and looks like he's a bully, but he's actually so shy and soft.

{personal comment: Bucky being a cute, but oblivious idiot always is endearing. Felt bad for the reader throughout, but I'm glad it turned out so sweet}

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Deny me [3.2k] @drewbarymore

Biker!Bucky x reader

Summary: In which you feel like Bucky’s ashamed of you.

{personal comment: I felt so many things reading this. Bucky is such a perfect boyfriend and a sweet dork, we gotta love him}

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Heavy bruising [14.2k] @aeaean--bliss

Bucky x reader

Summary: A court-mandated therapy session brings you and Bucky back together after months of not speaking, bringing up memories of the mission that fucked everything up in the first place.

{personal comment: I feel like I just watched a movie. This is truly a masterpiece. The angst, the writing style, the reader's sarcasm and the way Bucky speaks his mind at the end - so beautiful}

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11:59 pm, December 31 [1.7k] @lunarbuck

bestfriend!bucky x Reader College AU

Summary: You've been in love with your best friend Bucky Barnes since fourth grade, but to him, you're just his best friend. It's New Year's Eve, maybe tonight will be different.

{personal comment: This got me so excited at the end, Bucky made me swoon}

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Dust to Dust [7.4k] @autumnsghosts

Bucky x reader

Summary: When you come back from the blip in the graveyard having just been at your grandmother’s funeral, the cemetery seems like the safest place to be. Cleaning old gravestones had certainly never been a dream of yours, but now you find yourself there most days, scraping dirt and moss and algae from stones of people long dead and most likely long forgotten. It also doesn't hurt that a certain blue-eyed super soldier visits the cemetery weekly, placing flowers over two plots.

{personal comment: I didn’t really know what to expect the first time starting this, but it really moved me in a way I can’t explain. Bucky is so genuine and it was lovely to read about the way they bonded}

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You're my home [2.5k] @whitexwolfxx310 ♤

Bucky x reader

Summary: Your wedding night!

{personal comment: I love it soft and sweet and this is perfect}

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Different now [6k] @drabbles-mc ♤

Bucky x Ex!Wife!Reader

Summary: For Week 5 of @buckybarnesevents Hot Bucky Summer 2024: We're Exes

{personal comment: My heart is burning and my stomach is in knots but this is beautifully written and so deeply touching}

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Bribe the super [5.8k] @real-jane

Firefighter!Bucky x Rogers!Reader

Summary: You have a very hot neighbor. He happens to think the same of you.

{personal comment: This was an absolutely endearing read and I enjoyed it so much, had me smiling a lot}

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I won't mind [6.5k] @gxrlcinema

40's!Bucky Barnes x Widow!Reader, Reader x OMC (Past)

Summary: Your old pal Bucky only has a few hours before he goes off to war. Somehow, he winds up spending them with you.

{personal comment: I bailed my eyes out reading this. It’s beautifully written and so touching. I love those conversations}

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Citrus, Miniature Sun [6.4k] @babycap

Bucky x reader

Summary: Steve's getting married, and as much as it thrills you that one-third of your 'to the end of the line' trio is getting hitched, it also fills you with dread at the prospect of your ex-fiance also being on the guest list. Luckily for you, the other third of your trio (who you are most certainly, absolutely not in love with) has a plan. A childhood friends-to-lovers, fake dating AU fic.

{personal comment: It’s perfect and utterly beautiful in so many aspects and I felt so deeply. Bless Bucky for being the best man to only exist in fiction, but I won't ever let go of him, or this fic}

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Jack Pendleton [6.2k] @roger-that-cap

Author!Bucky x reader

Summary: moving into an apartment to get away from your last relationship was fun all fun and games until you met your extremely attractive across-the-hall neighbor, who makes awesome cookies and even better novels.

{personal comment: This was exciting and also really interesting. I was invested, really sweet fic}

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You are in love [3.9k] @viperbarnes

Bucky x reader

Summary: You can hear it in the silence. You can feel it on the way home. You can see it with the lights out, you are in love.

{personal comment: The way this relationship is portrayed just stunns me. It’s beautiful, real and domestic and I found myself lost in it}

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Call it love [10.7k] @sweetascanbee

Bucky x reader

Summary: As much of an expert as you were in pain, Bucky Barnes had introduced you to a novel strain, a kind of pain that encased your entire being down to the last atom, the kind of pain that left you breathless and sated, and yet still, wanting more.

{personal comment: I love to read about Bucky in Wakanda and this really hit me deep. It’s raw and geniune and just so insanely beautiful, I needed to take a break off the internet after that to fix my thoughts and feelings}

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Saints into the sea [7.4k] @babycap

Bucky x reader

Summary: Drunk jealous Bucky cockblocking the reader bc of his big dumb feelings

{personal comment: All the emotions portrayed and felt were so perfectly captured and I felt like watching a movie. The descriptions, the metaphors... It’s just truly amazing}